I never really felt engaged with the characters in this novel. I've read several YA books in the past (although this one would be more for young males over 18 due to reasons other reviewers have mentioned), and this one just felt distant and I couldn't relate to the story or the characters.

Reading Breath was as unsettling experience. There is a sense of foreboding that pervades this tale of adolescent risk-taking which led me, as a reader, to hold my breath, and sigh with relief upon turning the last page. Winton balances this darkness by conveying the exhilarating joy of surfing better than any novelist has managed before. I really felt I was out beyond the breakers with Pikelet and his friends, and it was that insight that made reading the book worthwhile. ( )

Usually I really enjoy a coming of age story but Winton's character never really grabbed a hold of me in ways that made me care about them. I will probably take a look at some of his other books just out of curiousity though. ( )

What a disappointment! Winton is clearly a great writer, and the initial chapters on Australian surf culture are very clever & engaging. However, after that it seems like Winton doesn't know how to end the novel, so he throws in a few pornographic scenes and tapers it all off into a depressing & mediocre ending. Not recommended for teens under 18. Strong disturbing sexual themes (including auto-asphyxiation resulting twice in death). ( )

This short, highly readable, remarkably complex novel is a worthy winner of the Franklin Award. Is it about ordinariness contrasted with high risk-taking and the rewards of either? Are there extreme risks with being ordinary, just as there are with its oposite? Pikelet the narrator turns out to be the most ordinary of the four main characters but his life is unsatisfying. Loonie his friend and extreme risk taker ends up dead. Sando the mysterious surfing guru is also a high risk taker but apparently ends well, while injured Eva his wife is also at the high risk end but draws sexual adventurism from Pikelet against both their better judgment.
An excellent piece of work. Don't miss it. ( )

Many would think this novel is a coming-of-age story. It is, all about the growing up, together and apart of Bruce Pike (Pikelet) and Ivan Loon (Loonie). But it is more about their daring one another to face danger, possibly death, through the fear that chills their flesh, bones and resolve. About competing against each other and against themselves.
Breath is Bruce's story, his life on his terms, even when both his friend Loonie and his mentor (Sando) and his lover (Eva) push him further and further. The book's story is set on a lonely Australian coast and told with captivating descriptions of the inhabitants, the major characters, the land, the ocean and most vividly the weather, swells, waves and thunderous experiences around surfing.
The only rough edges in the book are the transitions between beginning in adulthood, that action, delving into Pikelt's youth and growing by recall and the subsequent return to adulthood. They tie together but only loosely.

I've been thinking about the enigma of respiration as long as I can remember," says the narrator of Tim Winton's deservedly award-winning novel, BREATH.

Bruce Pike, a man with a complicated past full of addiction and regret, recalls for us his adolescence in Western Australia during the 1970s, when he was known as "Pikelet." He and his friend Loonie live in Sawyer, a small town of "millers and loggers and dairy farmers." Loonie lives in a motel, with his damaged and damaging family, and seems to exist solely to take risks, daring others to dare him into more and more dangerous stunts,

Although their parents have forbidden them to surf, rightfully thinking it's too bloody dangerous, the boys can't resist, and one day they spot a much older solitary surfer riding the waves with "his head thrown back as if he'd just finished singing an anthem that nobody else could hear." And so we meet 36-year-old Sando, a "huge, bearded, coiled-up presence a man with his own mysterious past, and shortly thereafter Eva, his wife. Eva is irritable, chilly, and suffers from a leg horribly damaged in an aerial skiing accident. .

"I've wondered whether the life-threatening high jinks that Loonie and I and Sando and Eva got up to in the years of my adolescence were anything more than a rebellion against the monotony of drawing breath. It's easy for an old man to look back and see the obvious, how wasted youth and health and safety are on the young who spurn such things, to be dismayed by the risks you took, but as a youth you do sense that life renders you powerless by dragging you back to it, breath upon breath upon breath in an endless capitulation to biological routine, and that the human will to control is as much about asserting power over your own body as exercising it on others."

And thus are the themes of thanatos, of sex and death are laid out for the reader. One of the many things at which Tim Winton excels is the ability to create a sensual thematic pattern. Breath, holding it, losing it, depriving others of it ... waiting, drowning, strangulation, even those dangerously silly games young people play, whirling about and holding their breath until they faint... each aspect of the air in the lung is unraveled like a string of bubbles throughout the novel. That in and of itself makes it a pleasure to read, and that would be enough, but Winton's descriptions, not to mention his perfectly-drawn psychological portraits are simply fabulous.

I admit there was a moment in BREATH when I thought things had gone off the rails a bit. Pikelet has a girlfriend named Queenie, and she is so much on the periphery of the story that, knowing how obsessed boys at that age are with girls, it lacked credibility. However, just when I thought......

TO READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW, PLEASE GO TO:
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This book is absolutely beautiful. A coming of age story set on the coast of Australia during the early 70's. The surfing descriptions will make you soar, while the pain of coming of age will make you ache. This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. Stays with you long after you finish it. ( )

Bruce Pike, an aging EMT looks back on his teenage years growing up in a remote Western Australian town, at a time when, nicknamedas "Pikelet", he and his schoolmate Loonie were obsessed with surfing. Under the tutelage of a drifter, a former surfing champion, they court danger, riding the big waves, dodging sharks and shoals. A younger Queenie Compton, a character in Winton's Shallows, appears briefly as "Pikelet's girlfriend. A riveting, disturbing coming of age novel. ( )

Breath is a book about fear, especially the fear of being ordinary, as well as living with the choices we make in life. The story is about a fifteen year old boy facing the choices that life has thrown at him, some he regrets, but is torn between what he thinks, what he wants and what is right. The writing style of Tim Winton was a little different then I prefer, but it is easy enough to get past easily. I think the book started very well, but finished with a let down. ( )

A LibraryThing Early Reviewer book, this is one of the better offerings. The scene is the Western Australia coast, in the 1970's, as two teenage boys, best friends despite their differences, are quirkily mentored by a surfing legend, Sando, who inspires them to reach beyond their limits in the search for what lies beyond them. The surfing becomes more and more surreally dangerous, and eventually the boys' differences become a wedge that separates the three of them. The narrator, the more introspective boy, learns about different kinds of limits from Sando's wife, Eva, as Sando and Loonie travel the world in search of the unsurfable wave. Well-written, a good coming-of-age story that aptly portrays an unfamiliar place, time and way of life. ( )

Tim Winton''s 'Breath' is a coming of age novel--narrated by an Australian EMT--Bruce Pike. The novel starts off with him and his partner responding to an emergency situation in which a young man has hung himself. That event sets him off--looking back into his own past--growing up in a small mill town in Australia.

As a young pre-teen boy he had become friends with another local boy Ivan Loon known as 'Loonie'--a kid constantly challenging the norms. The two of them take up surfing and become part of a local scene--more often than not awestruck by some of the other surfers. An older surfer Sando (Bill Sanderson) who lives nearby offers to let them store their gear at his home. Sando is looked up to by everyone and has an almost intimidating presence in his milieu. He lives with his wife Eva--a former snowboarder who is trying to recuperate from a very serious accident-- a bitter and emotionally brittle woman who he's constantly in argument with. Sando--who philosophizes constantly is not a very responsible sort and takes the boys along to increasingly more challenging and dangerous surfing sites. He has a habit of playing Bruce against Ivan or vice versa as current favorite and eventually destroys their friendship. Eventually he leaves Bruce behind--taking only Ivan to an exotic location and the hurt and disappointed Bruce almost unthinkingly becomes involved in an affair with Eva who is sinking deeper and deeper into her own hell of drugs and dangerous masochistic sex (which she uses to replace the thrills she misses from her skateboarding). Eventually though she gets pregnant leaving Bruce feeling lovetorn and somewhat scared and sheepish--afraid that Sando will come after him but Sando does not realize but the whole connection with them blows apart.

I think Winton is most effective here in his descriptions of the scenery especially of Australia's rugged coastlines--as well his writing gets to the core of the competitive nature of the thrillseeker. His characters including his narrator are not all that likeable though--which is not necessarily a prerequiste (at least for me) of a great novel. It holds this one back a little though. Even the older Bruce feels distant from life, from people. He feels only alert to their needs in times of crisis. I can sympathize somewhat with that but I'm not sure I'd be a really interesting character for a book either. It is worthwhile and I can say I liked it enough though that I can see myself giving Mr. Winton another try. ( )

"Breath" is a short novel that is packed with big philosophical questions. It challenges the reader to consider whether an "ordinary" safe life, or one filled with risk and danger, is more fulfilling; neither is without sacrifice.

The main character, Bruce, is the bookish only child of two older, introverted parents who maintain a quiet and predictable way of life. He meets Loonie, a teen with a risk-taking impulsive streak, and his life begins to change. When the two meet Sando, a thirtysomething surf king, and his injured, moody wife Eva, their lives set on a track that becomes more dangerous with each turn of the page.

Sando pushes the boys beyond their limits, taking them to more and more dangerous surf spots. The relationship presents an ever-heightening risk but at the same time holds an almost addictive quality for the boys. Bruce moves further away from his old life as he takes risks and engages in experiences in which he never imagined himself.

Tim Winton's writing style is beautifully descriptive but never overdone. He manages to say a lot in a few words. The novel questions how much risk is necessary to make life meaningful, and explores ways in which pushing too far can cost a person everything. It looks at the fragility of life, and the paradox that human beings will go to any length to save their lives even as they intentionally put them at risk. It's a fast-moving, thoughtful and deep novel that's well worth the read. ( )

This book reminded me of novels like "Catcher in the Rye" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Of those I liked the first and hated the second. I am on the fence with this one.

Bruce Pike is a withdrawn and strikingly humorless boy growing up in a small Austrailian logging town not far from the coast. He becomes friends with Loonie, a local boy, with whom he explores the physical, mental, and emotional highs of risk. Extremely introverted, Bruce feels asleep inside most of the time, and he seeks to find life through forces outside of himself. When he finds Sando, an aloof and adept older surfer, to be his surfing mentor it takes him further down the path to addiction to fear and risk and being on the edge. The structure is a flashback of the main character's early teen years framed between two brief glimpses of his adulthood.

The language is simple and evocative. We see everything through the main character's eyes and he sees with intense emotion. The beauty of the waves breaking on the sea the image is clear and vivid, and the grace inherent in performing a physical skill is well described. This book causes you to feel a lot, and quite strongly, and when it comes down to it, that is what bothers me most.

For most of the book (excepting when you are engrossed in the poetry of riding a wave - each moment singularly laid out in front of you) you are face to face with the suffocating blanket of melancholy, sadness, and lonliness that pervades the whole piece. On the whole it is quite depressing. And when things started to shift for him and he began a destructive sexual relationship with an older woman, I started to wonder if there was any hope left at all.

The last part of the book, a quick detail of his adult life, felt rushed and choppy, written without the smoothness of the rest of the narrative.

I think the author succeeded in delivering to the reader the feeling of being just short of drowning. In the end, despite the profound and insightful look into the emotions of such, I felt as relieved to be done with it as to find breath at the surface of the sea. ( )

Sawyer, we are told, is a town on the coast of Western Australia that lies between the forest and the sea. But in Sawyer “you keep to the mill, the town, the river.” Breath a novel by Tim Winton tells the story of a boy growing up in this town. But he manages a lot more than a bildungsroman, a “coming of age story”; he also explores the limits of risk.
Bruce Pike meets with three extraordinary people and undergoes a series of experiences within this story that profoundly shape his life. The author shows how the desire first to conform and then to excel can shape a life. He also dives deeply into the concept of risk and what it means to an individual to take a risk.
Over the last few years the idea of extreme sport has come into the public eye. This novel provides perhaps the best description of the allure of this type of activity that I have read. It is an immensely gripping novel and one of the few books that I have read in literally one sitting. It is commonplace to say “I could not put it down”, but with this book I would have been damn annoyed to have had to lay it aside.
The book contains sexual material and deals with the limits of sex in the same way that it discusses other limit and risks. It is clearly an adult novel. I found it to be a fine and a full book and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
A copy of this book was provided free by the publisher for the purposes of this review. ( )

I was pleased to have received this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program. I have been a fan of Tim Winton since I first read Cloudstreet in the 1990's. His language is simple and straightforward, yet somehow enchanting. Even disturbing elements in the story are rendered, somehow, beautiful in his writing. I was hesitant about this book at first, since I know nothing about surfing or the culture surrounding it, and my patience was tried with moving back and forth in time. I'm also not enamored of the sex scenes, but I'm not sure if that's me in general or if it has something to do with the story or the writing. It was a fair book, made exceptional by Winton's writing rather than the story itself.

I've read several other books by Tim Winton and have enjoyed the way he deals with people's feelings of estrangement from the familiar. This one starts well with some really engaged writing about surfing. However I found the last part where the narrator (midteens falls for an older woman and gets her pregnant) sooooo predictable. Why would she? Not convinced.
This is what two reviewers thought:
Tim Winton Breath
Review by Russell Celyn Jones in the Times
“This is a very good book marred by occasional empty posturing and a poor finish, where everything Winton has set up so well folds into itself.”

Patrick Ness
Guardian
“Because, finally, this is not a story about surfing; it's a story about fear, about pushing beyond fear, and about becoming addicted to the pushing. Moreover, it's a story about the price of being more than ordinary.” ( )

One of the hallmarks of Tim Winton’s work is the way he seems to achieve a sparse poetic intensity in the midst of a compelling and even simplistic storyline. Dreams, the sea, the sky, and desire seem to pervade the story, taking it closer, deeper and making it more powerful than a synopsis could convey. It would be fair to call Breath a surfing novel, as it is infused with the ocean, breaking waves, and the riding of the board. The protagonist, Bruce Pike is an ambulance driver whose grasp of...more One of the hallmarks of Tim Winton’s work is the way he seems to achieve a sparse poetic intensity in the midst of a compelling and even simplistic storyline. Dreams, the sea, the sky, and desire seem to pervade the story, taking it closer, deeper and making it more powerful than a synopsis could convey. It would be fair to call Breath a surfing novel, as it is infused with the ocean, breaking waves, and the riding of the board. The protagonist, Bruce Pike is an ambulance driver whose grasp of death and the many pathways to death is just a little too astute for comfort. After attending the death of a teenager, he is reminded of a pivotal point in his youth: the summer when he surfed Old Smoky, the biggest, most dangerous wave on the Point, dodged a shark, fell in love, and found and lost friendship.

The novel is set as a flashback played through the throaty timbre of a didgeridoo. It’s a complete exhalation: the outward breath of the storyteller as he takes us through his visions. Though the main story takes place during one single summer, the impact of that period is broader; giving both meaning and a pervading sense of loss and nostalgia to Bruce Pike's life, and the story as a whole. The fear that begins to grow on Pike, or Pikelet as he is known to his friends, is part of the transition to adulthood: a sense of mortality that the reader will understand:

Now I knew there was no room left in my life for stupid risks. Death was everywhere – waiting, welling, undiminished. It would always be coming for me and for mine and I told myself I could no longer afford the thrill of courting it.(248)

Nearly all of the characters in the story are unhappy and broken in one way or another. Bill Sanderson or Sando is the older surfer – a man who achieved some degree of fame in his younger days. Sando becomes a mentor for Pikelet, and his friend Ivan Loon, or Loonie, an aptly named boy with a penchant for daredevilry. Together the three begin a kind of adventure club where they aim to both increase their surfing skills and take on increasingly dangerous challenges in the surf. It begins safely enough, as a way to escape the ordinariness of the book's setting - Sawyer – the small working-class mill town in Western Australia where people keep to themselves. But as the story progresses, and Sando’s attentions between the boys sparks a serious case of rivalry, things get darker. More risks are taken, and Eva, Sando’s injured American wife sets on her own self-destructive path that takes Pikelet along for a very different sort of ride. The ultimate impact on Pikelet is that he loses his sense of self and walks, tentatively and passionlessly, through much of his life, occasionally dabbling in a parallel self-destruction to Eva’s:

I didn’t understand this behaviour. I had no special interest in electricity. Granted, it’s a potent, tangible presence in a world that’s cast off presences. It just just a moment of righteous sensation, like a blow to the head. It knocked me down. It hurt like hell. But it was something I could feel. (252)

Though this is a painful and sad story, and one that doesn’t really end happily – the damage is permanent -- there’s a transcendent beauty that runs through it, as it does through all of Winton’s novels. It is partly just the utter beauty of the prose. Winton’s words turn a paddle into the ocean into an epiphany:

Like you’ve exploded and all the pieces of you are reassembling themselves. You’re new. Shimmering. Alive. (138)

Nearly every line in this novel is taut, and wrought with tender nerve-ending sensation that it’s impossible not to feel along with the characters. The power of the novel isn’t only in the stormy waves that Pikelet risks his life on. It’s in the quiet musings that take place between the Didgeridoo and the Ambulance rides later: the fear, greater than any wave, that life is just an inhalation and exhalation of breath and nothing more. The breath motif is everywhere. There’s Eva’s breath in a plastic bag; Pikelet’s father’s Apnoea at night; the breath holding between Pikelet and Loonie that prefigures their surfing exploits; the exhalation of didgeridoo that narrates the story; and above all, the breath that is, metaphorically and actually, life itself. In the end, the journey becomes the point, and despite the damage, the breathing and dancing continue, creating meaning and value that needs "no explanation". It’s worth reading (and re-reading) Breath solely for the magic of its linguistic beauty. Tim Winton has created a tremendously powerful story that will continue to linger in the mind of the reader long past the initial reading

This book contains some of the most evocative and beautiful descriptions of the Australian surf , what it is about surfing that is so seductive for young men living on the coast and growing up in a small claustrophobic town.
Once the first two thirds of the book are completed the rhythm and pace of the story changes and become discordant and somewhat unconnected. The ending for me does not fit the narrative that is laid down at the beginning of the book and the final chapters do not do justice to the main character . I found the conclusion contradictory and disappointing.
Felt like the author just wanted to wrap up the story and tie off loose ends. ( )

Whilst I'm not completely in love with Tim Winton's narrating style, what he writes about in 'Breath', about the coming of age, is (are) lucid and important: how certain events shape you, competition, need for acceptance, role modelling, the fear of loss, the search for ascendency and the importance of standing out. ( )

Beautifully written, story of young surfer's passage to adulthood. Negotiating fear and sexuality, and coming to terms with relationships. ( )

What Tim Winton does very well in his novel Breath is his convey his ability to describe the helpless suffocation of being poleaxed, not only by the unforgiving western Australian surf but also by the fleeting acquaintances who enter our lives and turn them upside down. Yes, Winton assuredly hints, we will thereby grow into better surfers and more complete human beings, but only after being thoroughly dashed and mangled against life's currents, gasping for some sense of stability.

Pikelet is nary a teenager before becoming introduced to the world of surfing along the lonely Western Australian coastline. Winton retraces Pikelet's growth with his friend Loonie as they compete for the "wisdom" of the cryptic surfing master Sando. It's a story that not only deals with the typical coming-of-age themes, it's a story that deals with the concept of fear and the nature of accomplishment, both in and out of the ocean. It's about finding and acknowledging that invisible line across which one will find themselves flailing helplessly when in search for the next rip-current of reality. Moreover, it's about our tendency to use and abuse our so-called friends in the process, and the sacrifices we make along the way (school, family, etc.). Specifically, the tension between Pikelet and Loonie is unnervingly palpable; not necessarily sinister, but dangerous nonetheless.

Breath is a concise yet moving novel that touches upon multiple facets of Australian and surfing culture. Winton writes in a style that's similarly sparse to McCarthy, but flows well in clarity. One complication of the work is that I feel he lingers a little too long on Pikelet's relationship with Eva, Sando's wife. Though too much is left unsaid between the two, Winton dwells on several of Eva's proclivities which could comprise a separate novella. Otherwise, Breath is a sad, thoughtful yet worthwhile read. ( )

This novel contains some wonderful descriptions of surfing in Australia. They strongly convey the excitement, the fear and the exhilaration of it. The story is told by a man in his fifties who recalls the time, in his early adolescence, when he became interested in surfing, and developed a friendship with another boy and an older character, a hippy skilled surfer called Sando. The first part of the book , when the narrator is discovering the thrill of surfing is very well written, the pace is excellent and the descriptions are breath taking. The last part of the novel, in which the relationship between the boy and Sando's wife is narrated is a real disappointment, very boring. ( )

Once I got into the flow of the punctuation (no, really, speech marks serve a useful function) the language here fits this story so well - fluid, and powerful. Not sure if I'll re-read, but it is one that sinks into your memory and lingers. ( )