Danelle bought me this novel for my birthday and I finished it last night.

As anyone who has read this blog for a while would know, I am a Winton fan – possibly even an addict – and love virtually everything he has written. So when I heard this book was coming out I was frothing at the mouth with anticipation. I often feel like Winton writes what I would have written if i were a genuinely good writer. he says things like I wish I could. I feel in tune with his writing and the whole energy of his books.

However right off the bat there were a few things about Breath that knocked me a little. The first was the size of the book. At 213 pages it is hardly an epic and I knew I’d probably feel ripped off by the end. I would have just become engaged with the characters and the whole thing would end. And knowing Danelle paid $42.00 for it I was determined to get every penny worth out of it.

The second was that it was actually about surfing. This might surprise those who know my love of the surf, but what I have loved about Winton is the way the ocean and the West Ozzie landscape has formed the backdrop to his stories and in many ways has framed his writing. To move it to centre stage left me a little anxious. I guess I was wondering if the focus on surfing itself might actually be too obvious. People have often comnpared full scale surf movies to pornos – a dog-lame storyline hung around some exciting visuals. Now Winton is way too good for this, and his descriptions of surfing were as beautiful as any I have read, but I was still concerned.

Sadly it only took two evenings of slow deliberate reading to reach the final chapter. Now we have to wait another 4 years for his next novel.

Perhaps it was a self fulfilling prophecy, but my anxiety about surfing as the centrepiece had some merit. As much as the descriptions of Pikelet and Loonie’s first ventures out into the surf brought back wonderful memories, I just didn’t find the whole surf scene as potent as much of his other writing.

The guts of the story is about two young blokes who love surfing, and who find a ‘mentor’ in Sando who takes them out to surf humungous waves and stretches them to the limit. It traces the relationship between the boys the man and his wife and the twists and turns life takes in it all.

While the story itself revolves around surfing and the associated relationships and adventure, (kind of like a quality version of ‘Surfs Up’), the deeper theme of the book is powerful and worth a bit more reflection.

In essence it revolves around the desire for a life that is extraordinary in the middle of the mundaneness and blandness that forms most of our experience. The novel starts with Pikelet in his 40’s and now a paramedic attending a teenage death. While considered by some to be a suicide (hanging), Pikelet knows that it was actually accidental death by asphyxiation in search of a sexual rush. he knows because he has been there before…

Enter the idea of ‘breath’.

Much of life really is as mundane and ordinary as breathing in and out, which propels us to seek out climactic experiences – ways of encountering something more – or as Winto puts it “rebelling against the monotony of drawing breath’ . In many ways this is what the boys do as they surf bigger and bigger waves and as they seek new experiences, hyperventilating their way to longer and longer times under the ocean’s surface. Without wanting to spoil it, the story explores this theme of what ‘extraordinary’ looks like in a world where most of us need to live in the ‘ordinary’.

Loonie keeps chasing the extraordinary while Pikelet lives with his ongoing frustration with his own ordinariness. Somehow in the midst of the tumult that is Piklet’s life he learns to live with his own ‘insignificance’ while Loonie dies as a crazy feral always on the run and never content. Its probably no surprise that Pikelet finds some joy in this life as a paramedic where peak adrenalin experiences may remind him of his days in the ocean.

The metaphor of breath as that which gives life, is played out in the extremes of the sexual asphyxiation scenes and the mega hold downs in surfing and these are contrasted with the rhythmic, predictable, everydayness of simple inhaling and exhaling.

The messiness of life is contrasted with the sheer beauty of surfing. As Winton writes: “‘how strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, though nobody saw or cared.”

I think Winton actually commends the more ‘ordinary’ Pikelet who gets left behind by Sando and Loonie in their mutual pursuit of bigger adrenalin rushes. Pikelet lives where most of us live. He refuses to surf the terrifying ‘Nautilus’ with Loonie and Sando and is considered something of a coward, by them and himself. He struggles with his failure and his own demons of insecurity. he isn’t the ‘hellman’ he wishes he were.

Welcome to the world… But the fact that does he struggle is possibly his redeeming feature. He is honest and real, fragile and broken.

Loonie and Sando appear as superheros but in reality their adventures only serve to mask their own brokenness and struggle.

If anything the book is a testimony to the importance of being content with living an ordinary life. At least an honest divx sidewalks of new york ordinary life.

Maybe not my favourite Winton, but still a very good read, if you’re not easily disturbed.

This little clip is from the promo website and is very good, if only for its depictions of the south west Oz coastline.

Tim Winton reads from ‘Breath’ from Virginia on Vimeo.