Customer Reviews
Simply stunning - By: S. Zigmond, 29 Nov 2008 
If you'd asked me a week ago whether I'd consider reading a coming-of-age-novel about a teenage boy, surfing & seeking dangerous high-risk thrills, I'd have said you were crazy. If you'd said that I would love it, that I wouldn't stop thinking about it, I would have doubted your sanity even more.
Other reviewers here have told the bare bones of the plot so I won't. I have never understood the need to test oneself to the limit & endanger one's life indulging in extreme sports such as the two described here, free-skiing & surfing, but Tim Winton shows exactly how it feels & what drives some people to it. The writing is spare & yet deeply powerful, the characters alll flawed but understandable, the scenic descriptions of wave & ocean fabulous.
Other reviewers have remarked on how the book seems to fizzle out at the end. Yes, it does but this to me is intentional & just right for the novel. I may be wrong but nobody else seems to have noticed how the novel's structure mirrors one of the massive ocean breakers described in it. It begins with a sense of foreboding, then a darkening on the horizon, but nothing too scary, nothing that can't be dealt with. Then the action, the relationships between the characters reaches their maximum power & loom dangerously over the characters, especiallly in the central emotional intensity of the boy's affair with the older woman. Here the climax is reached, the wave smashes, after which everything becomes a rush of white water, fear, disaster, a maelstrom of madness & disfunction before levelling off again & flattening against the shore & dull normality, although nothing will ever be the same again.
All I can say is 'Wow!'
Taking risks..... - By: Mr. Jon Forster, 26 Nov 2008 
I enjoyed this story of a young man's journey through risk, what it means to him & what it costs. The story examines risk taking & how far it can go - some people live more than just "ordinary" lives - the rush obtained from risk taking, starting with how long can you hold your breath underwater, graduating to riskier & riskier surfing can only be retained by taking on larger & larger risks, & in extreme cases, to the deliberate brink of death. The book was well written, although I found the first half of it too slow, but the final third was riveting.
A pity about the punctuation - By: Mike Eccles, 26 Nov 2008 
I cannot get on with this book - I have tried & failed to finish it. The reason is quite simple: the author doesn't use speech marks (quotation marks)to separate the spoken word from the descriptive text. I find it impossible to get into the flow of the book where people are speaking - I have to keep stopping to work out what has just been said. When I hit a patch full of very foul language as well I gave up (this bit was easy to interpret - the bad language was clearly intended to be speech). A pity - there are some lovely sections of text with excellent observation & explanation.
Inspiration and expiration - By: A reader, 26 Nov 2008 Tim Winton's novel "Breath" is written in the form of a memoir by Bruce Pike, a 50-year-old paramedic. The story opens with Pike encountering a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation, prompting a recollection of his boyhood in smallltown Australia. Pike befriends a local tearaway, Loonie, & together they form a bond with Sando, a legendary surfer, who tutors them in riding the waves.
Surfing has often appeared in fiction as a metaphor for escape & adventure, & "Breath" is no different, but in the hands of a first-rate author like Tim Winton the result is of the highest calibre. The narrator's memoir constitutes an absorbing explanation for the course of his adult life; the metaphor is never rammed down the reader's throat, & the characters & incidents are beautifully evoked.
A Waste of Breath - By: Victoria, 25 Nov 2008 
After getting this through the Vine programme, I was looking forward to reading it, especiallly after seeing so many good reviews for it on Amazon. However I was reallly disappointed in it. The writing is elegant & beautiful & the cover is attractive...but sadly the story just failed to grip me in the way I thought it would & I was left lamenting the lost opportunity. I think I will read it again at some point & see if it improves on closer reading, but alll in alll it wasn't reallly for me.
