Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gnarly, 16 May 2008
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.
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elemental, 15 Jun 2008
The West Australian coast can be raw, elemental. I was there in winter two years back, when there was a real tree-snapping gale blowing and the sea off Cape Naturaliste was a mass of churning white foam and wind-hurled spray, and an unfortunate American tourist was swept to his death from the rocks at Dunsborough.
It is this elemental world that is at the heart of Tim Winton's new novel Breath and it is about people fronting up to the elements in an attempt to free themselves from the drabness of their provincial lives.
The narrator is the nearly-50-year-old Brucie Pike. He is a paramedic and is called in one night to deal with an adolescent suicide, which he recognises is not a suicide at all, but a case of masturbatory auto-asphyxiation gone wrong. For reasons which emerge later on in the novel, this sad event spurs Pike into a recollection of his teen years, those years of coming of age when life is lived at its most intense, most meaningful but, in many ways, most ignorant and most painful.
And Breath is nothing if not intense. Pike's adolescent relationship with his fearless mate, Loonie, and their interaction with the non-conformist married couple Sando and Eva are at the heart of the 200-page story. These people push themselves to the edge, embracing fear, paradoxically, to overcome their fear, and in doing so, experiencing momentary transcendence - the adrenalin rush, the feeling of being purely alive. The boys, under Sando's tutelage, surf the most menacing waves they can find; Eva's rush comes from - or came from - extreme freestyle skiing.
And yet this elemental intensity - almost faultlessy depicted by Winton - is tempered, through Pike's eyes, by a profounder sense of reality. Loonie may be fearless - but he is emotionally blind; he could not be the narrator of the story. Sando is not as free-spirited as he first appears. Eva, after a bad skiing accident, is semi-crippled and embittered, existing out there on the edge, perversely so, as events in the novel later reveal.
So the surf may be pure white, but the undercurrents are dark and deep. Only Pike, in spite of everything, is a survivor - because he has one foot on the land, one foot in the water. It is only he, in a pivotal episode in the novel, who sees the futility of trying to surf the Nautilus - the extremest of extreme breakers - because it is not a real surfer's wave; it doesn't allow for the "pointless beauty" of riding the long waves in - the recognition of which suggests a kind of hard-won, precariously balanced maturity that none of the other protagonists, in this beautiful and richly-observed novel, manage to achieve.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Catching the Big One, 21 May 2008
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]
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