Breath by Tim Winton - 3 stars (Subdue)

[Joy D]

Breath by Tim Winton - 3* - My Review

“I will always remember my first wave that morning. The smells of paraffin wax and brine and peppy scrub. The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing in air. How the wave drew me forward and I sprang to my feet, skating with the wind of momentum in my ears. 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 remember the solitary watching figure on the beach and the flash of Loonie’s smile as I flew by; I was intoxicated. And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.”

Coming of age story set in Australia, this book starts with protagonist Bruce Pike (nicknamed Pikelet) at an older age, dealing with an emergency. He then flashes back to his mid teenage years in the 1960s when he and his friend Loonie formed a surfing-related friendship with thirty-something Sando and his twenty-five-year-old wife, Eva. Sando mentors them on surfing techniques and pushes them to take risks. Sando is an adventurer who disappears for long periods for surfing trips around the world. While Sando is gone, Pikelet keeps company with Sando’s wife, a former skier with a damaged psyche.

This book was a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, it is beautifully written. It transports the reader back in time to Western Australia. The landscapes and seascapes are wonderfully rendered. The ocean and surfing scenes are powerful and spellbinding. On the minus side, toward the end of the book, it describes an unsettling and distasteful sexual practice that bothered me greatly (to the point that if I had known it was a critical part of the narrative, I would not have read it.) If you don’t mind such content, you will probably like it more than I did.