- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (2 May 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330455710
- ISBN-13: 978-0330455718
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 52,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Breath
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Product Description
Review
'Tim Winton's wonderfully controlled Breath did exactly and marvellously what it set out to do.' --Philip Hensher, Spectator
'The narrative holds mystery and surprise. Its outcome shocks, before it moves into something infinitely gentle and redemptive.'
--The Church Times
'With its wonderful descriptions of rural 1970s Australia, this is a lovely, sad book.' --John O'Connell - Books Editor, Time Out
'Searing coming-of-age novel... Haunting and compelling.' --The Daily Mail
'A terrific novel... Suddenly the allure of the perfect wave is understandable.'
--Readers' Books of the Year - The Guardian
'The narrative holds mystery and surprise. Its outcome shocks, before it moves into something infinitely gentle and redemptive.'
--The Church Times
'With its wonderful descriptions of rural 1970s Australia, this is a lovely, sad book.' --John O'Connell - Books Editor, Time Out
'Searing coming-of-age novel... Haunting and compelling.' --The Daily Mail
'A terrific novel... Suddenly the allure of the perfect wave is understandable.'
--Readers' Books of the Year - The Guardian
The Bookseller
'A superb novel by the always brilliant Tim Winton...exciting, beautifully written.'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful, gripping and thoroughly satisfying,
By
This review is from: Breath (Paperback)
This is the fourth Tim Winton novel I've read and is certainly as enjoyable as the likes of Cloudstreet, The Riders or Dirt Music. If anything, in each successive work Winton seems to further refine his amazing ability to write so sparsely and yet convey so much. In particular, the opening section of this novel lasts for just a few pages and yet immediately paints a devastating portrait which, when you stop to think about it, has mostly been painted by you in your own mind as it expanded on the brief but perfect promptings of the text. The mark of a master novelist.
The story takes place in an Australian coastal town dominated by its sawmill and not much else. Two bored teenagers become friends and then fall in with an older man who turns out to be a world-class surfer. As the narrative develops, there are numerous accounts of surfing adventures which, on the face of it, could grow tedious - and yet, once again, the precision with which Winton describes the moods of the ocean, and the exhiliration and danger experienced by those who seek out the big waves, leaves you with a very real picture. It's almost like watching a movie and it builds to a tense climax and then cleverly brings you back to the beginning. I won't go into specifics as I don't want to spoil it for anybody. In short, this is one of those books that is hard to put down, which you live whilst you read it and which leaves you with a satisfying sense of having learnt something you can't define. Very, very good.
43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gnarly,
By
This review is from: Breath (Hardcover)
This is the best book I've ever read about surfing. But apart from that, it's also a beautiful novel about how you grow up to be the person you are, and what experiences make you; and the descriptions of the natural landscape of Australia are gawpingly gorgeous.
Everything I found frustrating about Peter Carey's last book was made exactly right in this stunning book from Tim Winton. I already loved his writing on the basis of Dirt Music, where he was preoccupied with a coastal Australian town similar to Sawyer (I don't think the name can be an accident, as the book is all about boys' adventures). We hear the story from Pikelet's point of view, a lonely young boy on the fringes of growing up, who makes friends with a bit of a danger merchant called Loonie. Winton's characters are often self-sufficient loners who can't talk about their feelings, and reading him dealing with the technical problems of writing down the thoughts of someone fairly inarticulate is impressive on its own. But add in the power Winton has to describe the ocean in all its different moods, glassy on a calm day, deafening in a swell, and all the tensions of boyhood relationships moving into being a young man... And then the meditation which runs all the way through about the human ability to take risks in life, and what the desire for risk and adventure means. Quietly moving, faultlessly written, gets right into your heart.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breath-taking,
By The Grenouille (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Breath (Paperback)
This is the first book I've read by Tim Winton, but certainly not the last one. I have no real love for the sea and absolutely no interest in surfing, yet i was mesmerized by the intensity of all the scenes on water and how viscerally vivid they felt. It almost felt i caught a glimpse of what it is that surfers find so compelling in riding lethal waves (though still not tempted, me!).
This book is a beautiful love letter to the sea, but also a rather touching coming-of-age story. One more of those i hear you sigh.... well trust me: it is not. Don't feel I have the words to pinpoint why, but the story and the characters felt fresh and I just could not put the book down. Winton is one of those annoying people that make writing seem easy (and probably a reason for many talentless readers to run for creative writing classes), and if I know that I could never write like he writes (or surf like his characters do), I certainly intend to enjoy his gift for many books to come.
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