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 affair with Sando's wife, who is a former pro skier who damaged her knee so badly she can no longer take part in extreme sports and uses Pikelet as a means of introducing an element of danger to her own life. Winton writes so vividly and clearly and is descriptive enough to paint a picture without falling into the common trap of over describing. The author really does seem to be a master of knowing how much of the scene can be left to the imagination of the reader and how to use words to create subtle image boundaries. Winton essentially uses words like a trellis; he uses them to shape imagination in the way he wants without building it from the ground up like a wall. Even though I have no interest in surfing I could feel the heady pull of the waves, the excitement brought on by danger and the confusion of Pikelet as his relationship with Sando and Loonie deteriorates in ways which are beyond his skill to prevent.

The book tends to fall down in the last quarter. Things go downhill rapidly. Pikelet's life seems to never really recover from the addiction to adrenaline and his marriage fails, he never finishes his university degree and it seems that he spent several years as a nomad or in rehab. Some say that the book is about the waste of life, relationships and time to a beautiful but pointless endeavor and to some degree I agree with them. Certainly Pikelet's problems tend to stem from his obsession with adrenaline and he certainly wastes his school years and squanders his relationship with his quietly adoring parents. However, I think that this particular direction was a bit overdone, still well written, but not necessary. Winton decides to throw his narrator a lifeline by making him a paramedic later in life where the thrill of fighting against death fulfills his craving for danger and restores some measure of sanity and normalcy to his life. Too steep and complete a decline to be either realistic or enjoyable.

The interactions of Sando, Loonie and Pikelet are particularly rare in literature as the two boys vie for the older man's approval and comradeship and Sando sometimes favors one over the other openly, which in the end destroys the boys' friendship. Sando's almost callous insensitivity to the feelings of the boys when he shows one more attention than the other is counter pointed nicely against his almost fatherly attitude when they get into trouble in rough and dangerous seas. The characters develop realistically and are subtly rendered, a rarity in modern writing for which Winton should be congratulated.

Winton's writing style is great, his characters, though sparsely described are as real as people you'd see on the street. Shockingly real and where he describes the intrinsic need to do something pointless and beautiful, shockingly true.