However if you care for a slightly more unique opinion from a Surfer Dad, read on.īreath is told from the viewpoint of Bruce “Pikelet” Pike, a young lad growing up in a sleepy sawmill town called Sawyer (a fictional place on the West coast of Australia).Īs the title implies the book has a ‘breath’ theme throughout. So I’m not going to attempt an in depth book analysis, as there are plenty of other more competent reviews available. I still have Don Wilson’s The Dawn Patrol to read, but I’ve got to tell you about Breath immediately.īreath has been reviewed by The Independent, Guardian and NY Times to name just a few. My original plan was to read through all the best surf fiction books and write reviews for each in a single blog post.

Now.īreath is by far the best surf fiction book I have read, in fact it’s in my top ten books ever. As a reader with no overlapping interest or experience with the characters and circumstances of the story, I was drawn in by all of the details of the plot, and interested by Winton’s characters.Breath by Tim Winslow – 5 out of 5 If you love surfing and reading, but haven’t yet read Breath by Tim Winton – then stop reading this and go buy it.

On the whole, I would certainly recommend this book, as the writing makes the subject matter immediately more broadly accessible. It draws out the feelings of being on the brink of growing up and the ways different people confront that hurdle when it must be taken, and offers an involving view of teenage hero-worship, with it’s benefits and dangers. But the language of the writing in Breath carries the story along very intensely, even while almost every character’s likeability could be questioned. I’m not saying there’s anything bad about very male books of course – just that in general they aren’t what I’m drawn to or what I tend to enjoy. It is also an intensely masculine book, about a male coming-of-age, and for that reason I was surprised to enjoy it so much. Pikelet measures the rest of his life against those experiences, against the feelings he has in those tiny enclosed moments. I would expect to get bored with descriptions of waves after the first few, but they are written well enough and so closely embedded in the experience of it that they all felt distinct – which is in many ways the point. Breath is a reasonably short book at 246 pages, in which the adult Bruce Pike recalls his youth and coming of age, particularly in relation to a cult-like group of surfing friends. The light at the end of the Uni reading is in sight – this will be the second to last.

Breath book tim winton