Tim Wintons Breath Book Review

Tim Winton's eighth novel sees him in familiar territory: the sun-stunned, backwater settlement of Sawyer in Western Australia. It's where two boys, Pikelet and Loonie, bond over the art of holding one's breath underwater.
 
Winton is one of contemporary Australia's most acclaimed novelists and in my opinion deservedly so. He revisits preoccupations that I am sure were his earlier in life: self-discovery, puberty, masculinity and most interestingly that of the sea – most definitely the star of the book for me. Winton is at his best here writing about the great beauty of Australia.

You quickly get the impression the town featured in the book is a dull, tired place built around a sawmill. For 11-year-old Pikelet, it sums up all that is normal and boring to teenagers that he needs to escape from and finds this place amongst the waves.

He and Loonie find themselves in awe of the ‘big boys’ that surf. The boys fall under the spell of a blonde tanned grizzled man with a mysterious past and surfing skills of god like proportions. Impressed by the boys' dumb courage, Sando soon takes them on as his 'maniacal apprentices'. Pushed to ever wilder dangers - encounters with a great white shark, 20-foot waves - they fight between themselves for Sando’s affections. Pikelet’s obsession with gigantic waves and ultimately life and death gives him the meaning to life through his difficult and turbulent teenage years.

With Breath, Winton has written an emotive, powerful and deeply beautiful novel, a meditation on all things surfing which the reader soon realizes becomes the very essence and obsession of many people.