Breath

Title: Breath

Author: Tim Winton

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton / Penguin

Publish date: 2008

ISBN: 9870241015308

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This book is an object lesson to writers: superb prose and meticulous, visceral observations are not enough to make a good novel.

The story is not so much a coming of age as an explanation of the ongoing issues of a character, even though by the time we get to the ongoing issues they’re pretty much an epilogue and we don’t care anyway. Set in a fictional surfing community in WA in the 70s, the retrospective narrator ‘Pikelet’ and his daredevil friend ‘Loonie’ become surfing disciples to the surfing legend ‘Sandy’. (You guessed it, everyone has nicknames.) Relationships form and jar, adrenaline is pumped, and endless dangerous waves are surfed. Through it all runs the theme of respiration, from diving to sexual asphyxiation to drowning to sleep apnoea.

Plus point:

•         Incredibly delicate use of language. Forceps precision application of words to describe sensations.

Minus points:

•         Plot is carefully constructed and woven into the theme of breathing, but utterly lacks drive. It’s one incident after another which are supposed to ramp up the tension but because the incidents lead no-where, they don’t. The main ‘dramatic twists’ in the story we’ve seen coming from the first few chapters.
•          We don’t give a rat’s whisker about the characters because they don’t about themselves. NONE of the characters like themselves. The narrator admires some of them, with reserve. No-one shows any particular affection for the narrator. An utter lack of empathy ensues. You just wish they would all die faster.

The novel is depressing on so many levels, but to me mostly because it’s such a crying waste to use such great technique to so little avail. It’s like drowning lobster tail in soy sauce and chili, or burning a fillet mignon into a hockey puck. Should never be done.

More could be said, but I've lost the will to live. 

Two moose hoofs up out of five, only for the verbal magic.