It has taken a long time for me to come around to reading my first Tim Winton novel. Anything particularly popular I tend to avoid which of course is somewhat unkind to authors. However it has provided a good reason (along with so many others) why not to read The Secret, any of the Twilight series, Dan Brown books, Mitch Albom books, etc. etc. To pitch Winton amongst all of these pieces of pap is certainly unjust and unwise for Winton is a very fine writer.

I relented on the eve of a trip down the Great Ocean Road. This seemed like as good a time and place as any to put my half-baked, baseless, potentially ill-founded and prejudiced appraisal of Winton's merits to test.

The first two pages of Breath had me convinced it was worth reading. Essentially a male coming-of-age story involving lots of surfing, a fair quota of sex, risk-taking behaviour, and an array of male archetypes, Breath has a lightness and airiness (pun certainly not intended) and is truly evocative of it's place, if not it's time so much.

At about the three-quarter mark I was convinced my single word review would read simply,'Pleasant'. Instead the pace picks up towards the end (it is never sluggish mind you) and a bunch of developments leave you feeling uneasy.

Overall I enjoyed Breath a lot but it's not the type of novel I tend towards and while my attitude to Winton is now informed, more kind and overly positive, I'm not sure I'll be diving into another of his works real soon.

My three stars are overly frugal but I couldn't quite give it four.