Coach Fitz

by Tom Lee

Tom, a young man struggling to forge some sense from his experiences, employs the services of an older woman as his running coach. A former psychoanalyst, Coach Fitz’s methods combine fitness training with an intense curiosity about the spirit of the places through which they travel. Enthusiastic and perceptive yet plagued by self-consciousness, Tom finds himself at once fascinated and troubled by his mentor’s peculiar ideas.

As they follow an eccentric course across parklands, streets and beaches, a conversation unfolds about the athletic body, architectural style and especially the emergence from adolescence into adulthood. But when his relationship with Coach Fitz breaks down, Tom finds himself dogged by past failures and obsessions, and sets out in search of a student of his own, in an attempt to orchestrate an ideal expression of his emotional, athletic and intellectual urges.

Weaving earnest, comic and dreamlike voices, Coach Fitz finds marvels in unlikely places: in outdoor gyms, picnic spots and water towers; in internet cafés, hotel restaurants and bottle shops; in goat’s cheese, olive oil and sourdough bread; and via the body in motion, in its squats and stretches, burpees and breath friends, run-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, warm-ups and cool-downs.

Coach Fitz is an exploration of the outdoor mentality that plays such a dominant role in the Australian psyche. It is remarkable for its observations about landscape and physical exercise, embedded in the training routines and dialogues of the runners. But most of all it is about the emotions and aspirations of youth, and the complications these engender.

Playful, philosophical and strangely captivating, Tom Lee’s first novel speaks to the contemporary fixation on self-fashioning and wellness, conjuring an immersive world of intimacy, awkwardness and elation.

Genres: Fiction, Australia

238 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2018

About the author

Tom Lee is a writer known for his interest in landscape, technology and the senses. He grew up on a farm near Orange in central-west NSW, and lectures in the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney. He was the recipient of a Marten Bequest Scholarship in 2014.

Reviews

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so deliciously weird. I’ve never had a novel make me want to for a run before! It’s a book about obsession and emerging adulthood but where it really stands out is landscape. I feel like I have run all over the landscapes of Sydney and I’m completely energised. Quite a feat given I’m a Melbourne girl who doesn’t run. Ever.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

oach Fitz is the debut novel of Sydney author Tom lee – and it’s seriously good fun. Serious in the way that the novel depicts the very serious business of running while also satirising the ‘wellness’ and ‘self-improvement’ industries, while the sly mockery of self-obsession reminded me of Dave Hughes and his deadpan delivery of comedy that punctures self-importance.

The narrator Tom is a narcissistic young man wholly absorbed in over-analysing his own obsessions. When the novel opens he is hoping to get over his most recent failure with girls (Alex, in London) by improving his body-image (an obsession since adolescence), so he engages the services of an eccentric coach to help him improve his marathon performance. Coach Fitz is an expert in psycho-babble, and her unique take on running is that training should involve mindfulness about the running tracks. Readers familiar with the city of Sydney will enjoy the detailed (and quirky) descriptions of the various routes they tackle, starting at Centennial Park, moving on to Cooper Park in Bellevue Hill and Sir Joseph Banks Park and then to the beaches at Manly and Bondi and so on.

At Cooper Park, for example, which Tom had previously known only as an obscure lump of bush, Coach Fitz enlightens him…

We stretched at the stone pillars, Coach Fitz emphasising the importance of developing an appreciation for stretching as an event as important as the run itself, and an ability to take control of what she referred to as ‘dead time’ and use it as a source for contemplation, pleasure, or to simply take it on its own terms in a fashion free from agitation.
While we stretched Coach Fitz drew my attention to the unique features of the site, commenting on her love of natural amphitheatres, of which this was a fine example, and on her deliberate choice to embark on the run at a time when the transition from day to night was experienced to its fullest extent. Coach said that the feeling of running through an amphitheatre gave her the sense of being watched over and spurred on by the landscape. It accommodated the degree of theatricality she believed was crucial to activate in the soul of a runner. The world is watching you, she would say, run like the wind! (p.18)

Tom earnestly engages with all this self-help waffle until the coaching involves some sessions off-piste, as it were.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/18/c...

[Sarah Bellingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this and hope to read more of the author’s work in the future. I particularly loved the imaginary picnics with the various characters from the protagonist’s life; they made me feel better about my own dorky imagination where I picture myself in the band that I’m listening to. The style of writing reminded me a little of Border Districts by Gerald Murnane in how it played with thoughts and memories. Tom Lee is a talented writer and this was such a joy to read. Couldn’t put it down.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

wtf did I just read...

[Geoff Orton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book about a flawed coach and running in the Eastern Suburbs and Inner West of Sydney a bit like an inexperienced road runner, keen and unaware of what was ahead of me. And like the City to Surf, about two thirds of the way through, I hit Heartbreak Hill and found it hard to charge on to the end but ultimately glad I did. The language at first felt a bit like an undergraduate trying to impress a writing tutor but then opened up into the weird, ultimately rewarding book it is. Part landscape and architecture observations and pieces of memoir that read like poetic Strava summaries, it's certainly unlike a book I've read before. Yet it is infinitely familiar as I've run a lot of the paths myself and saw my own city again through these short chapters. Ok, gunna get some Iggy's bread now and eat it under a tree at Bronte.

[Shane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in the hope it would be a book about running. While there were some excellent running scenes, the other storylines were all over the shop. I did appreciate references to Terry Durack and Best Bets. But in the end, there was not one character I warmed to. Which is bizarre considering how friendly trail runners all are.

[Peter Holz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Part running tour of Sydney, part self-indulgent introspection, all tedium. I only stuck with it because it was short and I felt that it had to be going somewhere. Alas, no. It was as aimless as its runs, all described in excruciating detail.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Scathing review to come