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Australian writer Tim Winton's latest short novel (217 pages), unlike some of his previous novels--CLOUDSTREET and DIRT MUSIC come to mind-- is one that you can devour in one sitting for it will pull you down into it like the undertow that this fantastic writer writes about with such breathtaking beauty. We see the events unfold through the eyes of Bruce, now a gnarly-- one of Winton's favorite words-- paramedic in his 50's who recalls events that transpired when he was a budding teenager in the small town of Sawyer, Australia.

The novel begins with Bruce and a woman partner answering an emergency call from a distraught family whose teenaged son apparently has committed suicide by hanging. Then the narrator jumps back in time to his youth and talks for many pages about his friend Loonie and their strange relationship-- a sort of hero worship on the part of Bruce-- with an exotic former surfing champion Sando who pushes the boys to newer and more dangerous heights as they take on more and more difficult waves as they strive to rise from being just ordinary. Then there is Sando's American wife Eva.

BREATH is a strange novel indeed. If you are wondering what a teenager's suicide has to do with all this surfing on the Australia coast, as I was, just be patient for Mr. Winton ties up all the loose ends with a powerful wallop. The novel is a coming-of-age novel about sexual awakening, the danger associated with the emotions if they are left to run rampant when you are thirteen or fourteen, the scars that remain in adulthood.

I am always fascinated when writers from other parts of the world write about Americans. Eva tells Bruce what it was like growing up in Salt Lake City, Mormons and American ambition. "But the way Eva told it, her countrymen were restless, nomadic, clogging freeways and airports in their fevered search for action. She said they were driven by ambition in a way that no Australian could possibly understand. . . She made her own people sound vicious. Yet God was in everything - all the talk, all the music, even on their money. Ambition, she said. Aspiration and mortal anxiety." Mr. Winton has homed in admirably on the contemporary American psyche.

Tim Winton's language is always appropriate and often completely beautiful--from creating new verbs (rag-dolling) to describing surfing when Bruce contrasts the practicality of Sawyer's farmers, loggers and millers who "did solid, practical things" with the beauty and grace of surfers. "How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared." And he expresses his own feelings about surfing: "but for me there was still the outlaw feeling of doing something graceful, as if dancing on water was the best and bravest thing a man could do."

Tim Winton is one terrific writer.

The novel opens with the middle-aged Bruce Pike, then a paramedic, attending the scene of a death that everyone else considers (or wants) to be a suicide. Bruce doesn't believe that it is and thus begins the body of the novel where Bruce recalls his youth (during the 1970s) in a conservative logging town near the coast in Western Australia. In less than 220 pages, Tim Winton creates the angst of growing up, of finding your own way when those around you seem to be lost and captures the beauty and cruelty of the natural world while sketching in characters who seem to be constantly searching the external world for what can surely only be an internal form of happiness.

Who you end up being and what you end up seeing depends a lot on where you've been. Bruce Pike (`Pikelet') and Ivan Loon (`Loonie') form a competitive type of friendship in the double digit years just before teenagehood. Their friendship is both enhanced and complicated by meeting up with Sando, an aging surfer, and his wife Eva. This is a novel about life, friendship, experimentation and regret. It is also about boundaries, risk-taking and (for some) survival.

Tim Winton is a great author. His fictional worlds can be uncomfortable and some readers will find aspects of this novel confronting as I did. Despite this (or perhaps because of this), I'm glad I read this novel and some of the imagery will remain with me for a very long time.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

BREATH is a mesmerizing reverie about the meaning of courage - and life itself - that sucks the reader in from the first page to the last. This bittersweet coming of age story set on the wild coast of Western Australia follows two boys as they become obsessed with surfing and are both themselves compelled, as well as encouraged by their charismatic mentor, to pit themselves against ever more dangerous waves.

Deft, delicate characterizations set against a big country and its rugged people are vivid, but the scenes starring the whitewater monster waves sweep you into another realm altogether, whether you want to go there or not. Unforgettable.

Breath is set in 1970s Western Australia. Pikelet and Loonie, two adolescent boys, are at first brought closer together by their love of surfing and free diving. Ultimately, it drives them apart as they compete for the approval of Sando, a daredevil veteran surfer who basks in their admiration and delights in challenging them with ever greater dangers.

This is not so much a coming-of-age tale as it is a coming awake tale. Pikelet gradually comes to see the bitter reality of the people he idolizes, while also being required to accept the reality of who and what he is himself. But it's not all sadness and disappointment. Ever present is the beauty of the ocean and the release it offers. Winton's writing wakes you up to the rhythm of the water in its various moods, and the thrill of possibility that drives a surfer to tackle the next wave.

If you have little or no interest in surfing, this could be the best book you'll ever read about surfing. If you have a lot of interest in surfing, this may still be the best book you'll ever read about surfing. Tim Winton's skill as a novelist has improved vastly since he wrote The Riders.

NOTE: Sensitive readers may be uncomfortable with the raw and unconventional sexual content in this novel.

This is a powerful coming of age tale set against a background of life in a small South Coast, West Australian town, surfing and a series of events that affect the rest of the young, 15 year old, Bruce Pike's life.

The novel commences with a middle aged Para Medic, Pike on the way to an emergency call, thinking of his younger colleague's disdain of him and then suddenly confronted with the apparent suicide of a teenage boy. The experienced Pike knows better and he reflects upon his own teenage years.

A paen to surfing, the story tells of the boy's love of thrill seeking, his learning to surf after seeing "grown men dancing upon the water", the relationships with family, with his young friend (Loonie)and an older role model (ex surfing champion) Sando, whose lonely wife eventually takes his interest from surfing to sex.

Pike's adulthood is not perfect but his earlier discussion with Sando, when he considered " there is nothing wrong with being ordinary" appears to be what he has achieved and is comfortable with.

You do not need to be interested in surfing to understand or enjoy this powerfull and disturbing novel. Winton's prose has the ability to bring both characters and the environment around them alive. An extraordinaly gifted writer whose stories linger in your mind long after reading is completed.

In a small town, a young boy finds adventure where he can. Disregarding parental distress, particularly when the lad already is disdainful of them, is part of the game. Bruce Pike lives in Sawyer, a lumber town on Western Australia's south coast. Entertainments are sparse, to say the least. The best he can do is follow his mate Ivan Loon's pace. Loonie is well named since no dare seems beyond his attempt. "Pikelet" and Loonie use the local river to find their limits - staying under water holding their breath. In relating this tale of two boys entering manhood, Winton has added yet another gem to his crown of marked successes. He copped Australia's highest literary award, the Miles Franklin, for his first novel "Cloudstreet". He deserves another for this tale of a man's boyhood reminiscences.

Holding your breath under water brings confidence and self-satisfaction, but lacks a major need in boys, the admiration of others. Loonie's his mate, but they are alone in their fulfillment. Another test beckons, one which prompts a major confrontation with Pikelet's father, who loathes the sea. There are places along the coast where the waves arrive with majestic presence, threatening to sweep all before them. Enter Sando, an experienced surfer with the calm assurance of one who can read the water. Taking Pikelet and Loonie as apprentice surfers, Sando reveals an entirely new and challenging world. Loonie, of course, is enthralled, learning quickly and responding to risk with near foolhardiness. Both endure their spills, but both want to achieve the highest success they can. Sando deftly urges them on, finally leading them to a site where the waves are big, a rock punctuates the sea, and a giant white shark is their sole observer.

Loonie's exploits bring him closer to Sando than Pikelet can come to grips with. The distance between them grows as Loonie puts himself in increased jeopardy. For all Pikelet's disdain of his parents, a smashed body delivered at their front verandah is over the top. Another challenge presents itself in the form of Sando's wife, Eva. Not a surfer, she's a devotee of snow country, staging thrilling performances as an acrobatic skier. As eager to push the envelope as her husband, Eva has been sidelined by the combination of a bad accident and incompetent surgery. Pikelet is drawn to her, even at his young age, and the relationship unfolds in a bizarre manner. Winton builds the tension of this situation with unerring skill, balancing Pikelet's relations with Eva with his admiration of Sando and his competitive role with Loonie. Winton's a masterful writer with few peers. Compressing many elements into a brief story is a masterful example of his talents. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

(4.5 stars) When a middle-aged EMT arrives at the scene of a "suicide" by a seventeen-year-old who has hanged himself, he knows instinctively that this is an accident and not an intentional suicide--he recognizes the signs. Through flashbacks, the EMT, Brucie Pike ("Pikelet") relives his own teen years and coming-of-age on the west coast of Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. A lonely boy, he finds a companion in Ivan Loon ("Loonie"), with whom he shares a love of surfing, "something beautiful... pointless and elegant." But the beauty of surfing is far less important than its excitement and increasingly dangerous thrills. "We didn't know what endorphins were, but we quickly understood how narcotic the feeling was, and how addictive it became," Pikelet declares.

Tim Winton, Australia's best known and most prolific contemporary author, takes the reader along on a series of surfing challenges--life challenges for teenage Pikelet and Loonie. They practice by holding their breaths for extraordinarily long periods of time so that they can dive deep and survive the boiling surf if they are upended, and they force themselves to go the limit on every terrifying ride. Soon the boys become disciples of middle-aged Billy Sanderson ("Sando"), a surfing guru who fears nothing and who takes them to remote and more dangerous sites. "What we did and what we were after...was the extraordinary," Pikelet declares, and the "extraordinary," he believes, can be achieved only by facing fears and daring what no one else dares.

As time passes and the boys discover women, they extend their love of thrills into the sexual arena. An older woman with whom Pikelet has a relationship introduces him to her own need for exotic thrills, and Pikelet begins finally to question the relationship between excitement, thrills, risk, and death, and what maturity really means. Does being a mature man mean giving up thrills and choosing to be "ordinary"? Is "extraordinary" a relative term bestowed on one person by other people who value the same things? And how does one really become "extraordinary"?

In spare prose which uses some of the most vivid action verbs ever, Winton tells an exciting story which makes the seductive thrills of surfing comprehensible to the non-surfer. The characters clearly reveal themselves as humans--within the surfing milieu and within their private lives. Some grow in the course of the novel, and some do not. The life lessons which Winton articulates so clearly evolve from the action of this unusual plot, and when Brucie Pike reviews his life at age fifty-two, he finally puts his life as Pikelet-the-surfer into perspective. Tim Winton's western Australian coming-of-age novel is vastly different from The Catcher in the Rye and other such novels in terms of its setting, but not so different, after all, in the boys' discoveries of what makes men humans and what makes life worth living. n Mary Whipple

Dirt Music : A Novel
Cloudstreet: A Novel
The Turning: Stories
That Eye, The Sky : A Novel
The Riders

Breath, by Australian writer Tim Winton, won the 2009 Miles Franklin Award, and as usual, I found myself reading it a little later than most. It's as if I was saving it for later, like a last piece of chocolate. That's how I feel with Winton's writing, beautiful, evocative, alive, never overdone. Breath tells the story of two thrill-seeking boys, Bruce and Loonie, in the early 1970s, whose attraction to water leads them astray. They meet a mysterious man named Sando, who will teach them to surf and search for extremes. Soon the two boys become more and more reckless in their endeavours, even if Bruce (the narrator) feels something is not quite right and wonders where this is leading. Loonie and Bruce drift apart in the process. Sando's presence becomes somewhat sinister, and when he and Loonie abandon Bruce to go surfing in Indonesia, the narrator starts a tortured relationship with Sando's American wife, Eva. Eva carries ghosts from her past and drags Bruce into a dangerous downward spiral, from which, in a way, he will never recover.

I enjoyed the book. Winton's writing is as exact and subtle as always, and the story, although sinister and scary, is just another tale of growing-up in a small country town and of looking for one's purpose in life. In fact, Breath is a story about what it means to live in extremes, in short, to be alive. Beware though, the novel can be very dark and unsettling at times.

Breath by Tim Winton is about transcendence. Winton explores our need to escape the ordinary, to go beyond limits of thought, to achieve something beyond the mundane and exist above and apart from the material world.

Pikelet and Loonie seek transcendence. They aim to live in the space between life and death where fear is challenged and survival becomes the ultimate rush. They test their own fear, first in holding their breath under water, then in confronting the edge of killer waves on the ocean, and finally Pikelet propositions death itself by engaging in dangerous sex with an older woman.

The main body of the novel deals with coming of age; both boys struggle to find a place in the world. Winton writes in the first person. He frames the novel with Pikelet's reflections at age 51. Pikelet had returned from an EMT call with his young female partner, to his apartment alone, where he understands he is finally at peace with his imperfect life. He blows his didgeridoo honoring his own breath, his efforts to relate to his children, and his continuing ease and beauty riding the surf. Though Pikelet has accepted the mundane, he still has moments of transcendence. Life is imperfect, and finite; life is also transcendent. Breath gets to the essence of life.

Some random thoughts I have on this book are as follows and contain plot spoilers.
The story in effect spans a 30-ish year time-span, but the vast bulk of the story concentrates around Pikelet between the ages of around 13 and 17. You get the odd feeling that his is a life that peaked too soon, and the mental price of him becoming immersed in metaphysical waters that were out of his depth cost him the middle years of his life. He becomes a man essentially alone, with his relationship with his wife and daughters mirroring that of his parents, he almost becomes an observer in his own life.
Winton probably only expends 3 dozen pages on Pikelets life since the age of 17, perhaps mirroring the feeling that Pikelet himself feels that the peak of his life was his mid-teens and that period shaped his subsequent actions.
The fact he tells his story comes due to the rediscovery of himself though a job as a paramedic, a good paramedic, where he almost reverts to the "Sando" roll, and becomes a mentor for the young and up and coming, who unlike him and Loonie, his protégé views him as creepy and with the arrogance of youth feels she has nothing to learn from the middle aged Pike.
His confidence with his ability as a paramedic parallel his confidence and ability on the surf board and at the end of the story, he demonstrates this to his 2 daughters, that their old dad was once something, and when out on a board, is still the young man he once was.
Why did I like this book? The writing style is evocative, shorn of punctuation like Cormac McCarthy, but just as eloquent. Nothing much happens in the book, but I was drawn in by the spell of wave, wind and the paths these few characters might choose to take. Mostly of all, like in all of my favourite books, I identified with the main character and the cloak of unfulfilled sadness that adult Pikelet wears.
Recommended.