Breath: A Novel by Tim Winton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Breath: A Novel
Book Review: Alone in purgatory
Summary: 5 Stars
This strikes me as one of Winton's more complex, challenging books. Each character is alone and on trial in the face of elemental realities--the sea, the weather, the sky, sexuality, the vastness of the world. Is there any better metaphor for that separateness, your own spiritual that-ness, than an awareness of your own breathing? The middle-aged narrator recalling his pivotal youth is living an extended after word to those years of awakening. But he has survived, which is much more than any other character in the book has achieved. The picture of what it means to be human in this portrayal is bleak. Yet the novel itself is well written, achieves beauty=truth clarity. The perspective that I got--and maybe it takes someone way more sophisticated at this critical reading and reflection than I am to explain how and why--is that this is only one way that life can be lived. Winton is not writing as if the novel portrays the single human condition, but rather that all of this is a cautionary tale.Book Review: Another Fine Tim Winton Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Awe-inspiring writing
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a beautifully written novel by Australian writer, Tim Winton. It is a story of teenager Pikelet, his friend, Loonie, their surfing mentor, Sando, and Sando's wife, Eva.
The story takes place in Western Australia. The Australian coastal terrain, the threat of sharks, and the high, dangerous waves create a strong sense of place.
Like surfing, this story is one of anticipating the next surge of action and emotion, exhilarating while it lasts, and leaving you jazzed up after the ride is over.
Book Review: Beath
Summary: 5 Stars
Engrossing and astonishingly real, in Tim Winton's Breath we find ourselves living in the rugged beauty of Australia in the 1970s, immersed in the mundane lives of two ordinary-striving-to-be-extraordinary young boys. Befriended by a surfing guru named Sandos, the self-absorbed free-spirit they come to idolize, the boys, one called Pikelet and the other Loonie test their limits. After "long days of chopping wood in the rain for days out in the long yard behind Riverside, amidst a wasteland of weeds and lines of washing, broken sofas and stone trough," the boys escape to surf. Pikelet narrates: "I will always remember my first wave . . . the way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing in air . . . I leant across the wall of upstanding water and the board came with me as though it was part of my body and mind. The blur of spray. The billion shards of light . . . I was intoxicated . . . I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living . . ."
Pikelet is a lonely introvert, drawn to the lure of the excitement, to pushing the boundaries of his skill and mental fortitude--to a point. Loonie is a wild child, insolent, discontent and distant, but wreckless. When Sandos chooses Loonie over the other to travel on a great but dangerous surfing adventure, Pikelet is left behind. Alone and forgotten, he connects with Sando's embittered and isolated wife, Eva, an extreme skier sidelined too early by an injury.
Pikelet and Eva embark on a journey of their own and without sympathy or sentiment, their relationship evolves to include another kind of game-in-the-extreme--one that's just as risky.
Winton has created a true coming of age tale in Breath, with descriptive narrative that gives life to the sea and the countryside with a skill so astounding one can feel the setting's pulse and powerful character--and the ever-looming threat of death. We find ourselves inside Pikelet's head led there by a story-telling skill so masterful we barely know it's happening. While some might wonder if Pikelet's boyhood encounter with Sandos and Eva is enough to explain his troubled adult life, Winton makes a most convincing case using words that capture the dangerous and fragile states of being that Pikelet, and those of us so like him, didn't know we possessed.
Book Review: Beautiful, heart-rending, evocative... what else is there to say
Summary: 5 Stars
Breath is a beautiful novel about a teenage boy growing up on the rural Australian coastline who finds his life and love in surfing. "Pikelet" is a strong first person narrator. He is young and vulnerable but also resilient and sometimes fierce. Because he is recalling the story from the perspective of middle age, he also exhibits a heart-rending wisdom as he recounts this tale. Winton keeps the plot on a tight course via Pikelet's near-menacing relationship with his best friend Loonie, the classic bad friend with no fear and maybe no morals; as well as their growing involvement with the older surfer legend Sando, who opens up their universe. The book is so clean and sparse; that air of mystery around both Loonie and Sando keeps the pace quick; the emotions evoked by Winton's writing are so real and so lovingly painful. And you can practically taste the salt of the water and hear the crash of the waves. Makes you think about what it means to be alive; to experience moments of true grace. Let me clarify also that I was a bit apprehensive that I'd have to be a teenage male surfer to enjoy this book. Far from it; as a 30-something year old lover of a wide genre of books (mystery, historical fiction, romance, modern comedy of manners, etc.), this is a great book. Beautiful.