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| Breath | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Winton
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
Buy New: £7.83
You Save: £7.16 (48%)
New (22) Collectible (2) from £7.83
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 2267
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 215
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0330455710
EAN: 9780330455718
ASIN: 0330455710
Publication Date: May 2, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Great until the last 20 pages October 1, 2008
Tim Winton does a great line in characters on the edge of society whose lives serve to illuminate that society; he portrays people who, while they have stepped outside the framework of standard social convention, seek reassurance as they fear showing their true feelings.
The tale of a teenager's rites of passage is offset against the force of nature, with the difficulties in finding a foothold in a tough, unyielding world.
For those of us who would not know one end of a surfboard from the other, the brio with which Winton brings the experience to life is very welcome; at that point, the surfing (which is only one part of the story, of course) becomes inclusive, rather than exclusive.
In the last 20 pages of the book, however, the narrator's voice is overwhelmed by the author's voice and the entire tone changes with something of a clunk; for me, that took the edge off the book somewhat.
 don't like surfing? doesn't matter August 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I heard an interesting review on the radio for this book and thought I would give it a go. I was hooked from about page one. It isn't a story about surfing it is a story about risk, challenge and how life changes the people we are. A totally amazing read. I could not put it down.
 charlie don't surf August 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I couldn't care les abotu durfing and male bonding or coming of age, but I have to admit this book, like all the best is not really about what it says it's about on the cover. Deep down it's a study of male insecurities and the terrible alienation of modern man, craving the wilderness and extreme experience as a way to deal with his dislocation from nature. fascinating and insightful.
Breath July 31, 2008
I have just finished reading Breath and I thought it was a fantastic book despite the fact that it's got quite a male slant to it and I don't surf!
Elemental June 15, 2008
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
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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