The pair aren’t exactly kindred spirits, but there’s a bond between them - mainly in the form of “deep diving and breath-holding against the clock”. The only time he is ever sure of himself is when he is swimming in the local river or surfing in the ocean.īut when he meets “Loonie”, the town’s wild child, everything changes. Bruce Pike, or “pikelet”, is an outsider - his parents are English immigrants - who has no friends and lacks confidence. I read Breath over the course of a few cold winter days and found myself mesmirised by the gentle, occasionally heart-breaking, story that unfolds, of a boy growing up on the Western Australian coast in the 1970s. But he does it so delicately you’re not even aware that it’s happening - a bit like breathing itself - until you put the book down and mull things over. In Breath, his eighth novel, he focuses on the concept of breath - and breathing - so that it infuses almost every page. You’ve got to hand it to Tim Winton for being able to pick a theme and really work it.
Fiction – paperback Picador 247 pages 2009.
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