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Jul 29, 2010

D.E. rated it:

Breath continues Tim Winton’s string of strong novels and story collections. While it isn’t quite as good as The Riders or Dirt Music or the incomparable Cloudstreet, it is a worthwhile read, full of dark impulses and sudden flashes of grace and light. Like Riders and Music, Breath deals with a middle-aged protagonist whose life has turned to ashes and bone shards, unlike those two novels the primary concern is this man’s coming of age told in retrospective.

The bulk of the n More...

16 comments like (19 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

I really, really loved this novel of two Australian teenage boys and their obsession with a has-been 70's surfing guru and his angry, bitter young wife. The surfing descriptions made my heart pound, and the narrative builds and breaks just like a wave, from a slow, thoughtful beginning to a tension filled climax that crashes down into a boiling, foaming conclusion. I loved what Winton had to say about the nature of obsession, of what it means to be a man, and the fragility of relationships based More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2011

Shirley rated it:

Despite hailing from Western Australia myself, I have never read any of Living State Treasure Tim Winton’s work. Shocking I know. So I thought it about time… although I’m not including the dabble I had in primary school with The Bugalugs Bum Thief, which I don’t think counts... So Breath it is. I am sure that many people will tell me this is perhaps not the best point to start, that maybe I should read the popular ones Cloudstreet or Dirt Music first, but as far as I’m concerned, this book along More...

13 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2008

Lauren rated it:

Amazing and disturbing coming of age story set in western Australia.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

★ Jess rated it:

I am lost for words. I have absolutely no idea what to think right now.
Was the plot intriguing or boring? Was the writing lyrical or stupid? Was the ending disgusting or heartbreaking?
I think that I will 'like it'. It was, after all, the most unique book Ive read in ages, probably ever.
It is certainly not what I expected, though still enjoyable. The four lead characters are amazing, easily the strength of this book. Each is unique. Each is exciting and un-predictable. They a More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2008

1morechapter rated it:

Ugh. I thought this was about a teen boy surfing in Australia. I wanted it to be about a teen boy surfing in Australia. And it was, for about 150 pages, then it goes off into a weird and extreme area that I will not mention here. I feel ripped off because I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book, but then to have to be subjected to…blech.

Pikelet and Loonie are two teenage boys obsessed with surfing. They meet up with Sando, a guy in his mid 30’s who coaches them in the sport and some More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2011

Sam rated it:

I've just finished this book in one sitting ... I woke up and in an attempt to get back to sleep I picked this up ... I'll be paying for that decision today - but not regretting it for a second ...

put aside for minute that I'm probably biased - tim winton is a Perth boy and he's set this story in a place that feels familar and that is well loved by this chick ... but I'm lying here in bed in the city & I can smell the beach ... my shoulders are tingling with sunburn from an age ago a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 05, 2010

D.m. rated it:

While researching for my next novel, I've been working on getting some background feel for surfer culture in fiction. This novel, is the latest by Tim Winton, popular Australian author whose previous bestsellers include Cloudstreet and Dirt Music. I had it ordered from my local library and was on a long waiting list, and incidentally a librarian there asked me if I would be returning my borrowed copy soon as the waiting list for all available copies was 111 people!

There are some that w More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Roxann rated it:

It makes me so sad to give this book only two stars. Winton is one of my favorite Australian writers. The first 3/4 of this book is brilliant - two young teenage boys learning to surf in Western Australia in the early 70's, pushing their limits in increasingly extreme ways in a time before extreme sports was part of the vernacular. The writing is so brilliant, so evocative and descriptive, that I wish I had tried to learn to surf. It's almost better than being there - I can see the waves, feel t More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 16, 2009

Eric rated it:

Winton's novel is an Australian bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story, and a very captivating one at that. It's quite simply a story well-told, with characters that remain mysterious despite being sharply drawn in the narrative and a setting that seems both alien and familiar at the same time. It's a novel about youth and friendship, the search for adventure and meaning in one's life, indifferent parents and surrogate role models, and the unexpected affiliations that can define our lives. And so More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2008

Danny rated it:

What a feeling it is to add new vernacular to the reader's toolbox because of a gifted writer like Tim Winton. Forgive the bad pun, but Winton can really breathe succorous gulps of breath into the lungs of English. His characters are diving from normalcy through extreme sport and a wealth of sensual information. Pikelet, our narrator, restores honour to melancholic reminiscences by describing for readers the adrenaline infused pleasures of his adolescence spent swimming, surfing, shagging, and c More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2009

Kim rated it:

This book starts out strong with great character development and sense of place (rural coastal Australia) as is typical of Winton, the best writer to come out of Australia that I know of. The most vivid, heart-stopping descriptions of big wave surfing that I've ever read. Unfortunately the story degenerates into a story of addiction and self-hatred: interesting, I guess, if you are a therapist or something, but not all that pleasant to read. Still, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 11, 2009

Jaimal rated it:

Breath is a masterfully written tale of what it means to live in extremes; and since most of us, in our own ways, do, it’s a tale about what it means to be alive.

I’m ashamed to say that I only heard of Tim Winton when a blogger recently wrote that Saltwater Buddha: a surfer's quest to find Zen on the sea reminded him of Winton’s surf literature. I am now very honored to be mentioned in his company.

A novelist with a voice no one could copy, Winton’s ability to be colloqui More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2012

Meg rated it:

This is such a beautifully written story that took Bruce, (Pikelet) through the toughest years of life - adolescence. Desperately looking for role models, he finds a mate in Loonie, who is also trying to work himself out and together they find Sando, an older man, who sees their potential, and tries to live through their youth.

Sando uses their youth for his own dreams and pushes them to the extreme so that they are always wanting for more. The surfing becomes an addiction whe More...

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Sep 17, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

Breath is set in 1970s Western Australia. Pikelet and Loonie, two adolescent boys, are at first brought closer together by their love of surfing and free diving. Ultimately, it drives them apart as they compete for the approval of Sando, a daredevil veteran surfer who basks in their admiration and delights in challenging them with ever greater dangers.

This is not so much a coming-of-age tale as it is a coming awake tale. Pikelet gradually comes to see the bitter reality of the peop More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2011

Gwen rated it:

The brilliance of this book is hard to overstate, but perhaps easy to miss because it comes in the guise of a surfing memoir. Off the west coast of Australia in the 1970's, two teenage boys are being taught to surf by a much older devotee of the sport. This is not a plot that would normally appeal to me, as the only connection I have with surfing is admiring it once in a while from the safety of a beach. But as Tim Winton makes clear, the beautiful and exhilarating dance on the waves is built More...

1 comment like

Apr 19, 2011

Jamampoline rated it:

"Breath" is pathologically Tim Winton-y and western australian-y in the alienating, vast, lonesome tradition of so much Aussie lit (it's like Australia itself isn't far enough for these authors, they have to push their stories to the far edge of oz). The spare style had more crunch than dry bush in summer and more ocker than the back of Bourke (seriously, the old story of Snowy Muir?), but there was something honest about the surfing theme at the end of the day. Pikelet and Loonie come More...

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Mar 21, 2011

Nancy rated it:

Tim Winton has long been one of my favorite authors, and he hasn't let me down yet. His novel Breath won the 2009 Miles Franklin award, beating out its competition: Wanting by Richard Flanagan, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (both of which I've read) Ice by Louis Nowra (which I own but haven't yet read), and The Pages by Murray Bail. In Breath he explores a number of topics, none the least of which is the choice between whether it is better to live an "ordinary" life or to walk on the w More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 11, 2011

Nicole rated it:

"This is the book for my book club next month. It was decided weeks ago to read this book, but at our last meeting one of our newest members expressed some very strong opinions.

The term which instantly springs to mind, which she used, is "foul". With this opinion most of the other club members were put off from reading it, but it was this strong reaction which immediately made me what to devour it. I wanted to know what could possibly be in this book to cause such a stro More...

1 comment like

Nov 28, 2010

Kimmiie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Aug 29, 2010

Erin rated it:

I read this for an adolescent literature class and thought that book was very good, but that I would feel very uncomfortable using it in a class. In some ways it feels similar to A Separate Peace, focusing on jealousy between boyhood friends, but adds in a major thrill-seeking element. In many ways, it's great fun to read about the dangerous adventures that characters have surfing in Australia, but the BSDM was a little unpleasant. The symbolism, action, pacing, and depth of feeling explored More...

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Jul 20, 2010

Jessica rated it:

I didn't know what to really expect when I picked this book up. Breath is the first Tim Winton that I have read, and before that I had only heard a few opinions for male readers. I had heard that Mr Winton wrote books for blokes, blokey issues and blokey characters. What I got was something not entirely different from that but something that surprised me.
The story starts quickly and brings you straight in. I wanted to know so much about the Bruce the main character almost immediately. Thi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 21, 2010

Eva rated it:

This is a book written for adults that could easily be YA - the narrator, now a middle-aged man, is looking back at his troubled adolescence as a surfer in a tiny town in western Australia. The surfing scenes - and Pike's terror whenever he's in a surfing situation that is out-of-control - are superb, as is the depiction of the complicated relationships between Pike, his edgy friend Loonie, and a married couple in their 20s who take them under their wings (sort of).
My only complaint is th More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 18, 2009

Dan rated it:

My friend Paula, who is a fine reader, recommended this book and I follow her recommendations. I've never been sorry, either. The urge to take extraordinary risks is something Paula understands better than I do; she's been an nationally recognized skydiver. So this book took me into the risk-taking need better than anything I've seen, and then out again as the narrator gets older and sees risks in a different light. In the process, the dangers of high-risk surfing are illuminated, though not qui More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2009

Lyndon rated it:

All around the world we see native novels that just quintessentialy get the places they portray. If you think of novels you love, often there is a really strong sense of place, and you feel as if you're there as soon as you begin to read.

I know of only one author who simply gets Australia in this fashion. And he is Tim Winton. Even shut here in my house on a rainy night, I can feel the sand, hear the waves, see the sun - and fittingly - I can breathe the beach.

Winton's More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 04, 2009

Shannon rated it:

Australian writer Tim Winton's novel is one that you can devour in one sitting for it will pull you down into it like the undertow that this fantastic writer describes with such breathtaking beauty. We see the events unfold through the eyes of Bruce, now a gnarly 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 fa More...

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Apr 29, 2009

Collin rated it:

At first I resisted the charms of this novel. The surfing, the adolescent derring-do, the sage-like surfer dude--the novels' old-fashioned masculine certainty, the idea that Knowledge and Truth can be gained from male bonding and acts of courage. I'm so very sick of this. I have grown cynical, I guess--disdainful of these types of stories.

But the prose--and, yes, it's exactly what you'd expect, all very direct and exacting, building upon Hemingway rhythms--drew me in and, before I re More...

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Feb 22, 2009

Newengland rated it:

Setting: the rugged coastline of western Australia and the beautiful (shark-infested) waters off of it.

Characters: Pikelet (14-yr-old protagonist, sensible, conservative, wide-eyed and taking it all in)

Loonie (Pikelet's dangerous sidekick, the type of "friend" who leads you to two places more often than not: Dangerous and Forbidden)

Sando (36-year-old Laird Hamilton-type, surfing legend who still surfs and hangs out for "a living"; guru and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

So close to a four star rating. A really, really good, almost freakishly realistic novel by Tim Winton. It's hard to describe what it's about. Ostensibly it's the story of a young man growing up in a small town surfing legendary and incredibly dangerous waves while still only being 15 with a mate, Loonie and an older mentor, Sando, who was a former professional surfer but who now teaches Pikelet and his friend to surf as a means of feeding his own ego and lust for adrenaline. Pikelet has an affa More...

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Apr 25, 2011

Josh rated it:

Reading this book made me feel like I was back in ninth grade English, rereading ‘Lockie Leonard’, only without all the outrageous, comedic catastrophes. Expect yet another teenage coming of age tale, set in yet another small town just outside Angelus, with the same ‘surfing as an allegory for life’ overtones.

Most of Tim Winton’s books are heavily centred around surfing, and to his credit, this time he’s woven it into the central story. The feelings of exhilaration and freedom he desc More...

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