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Constant Chatter Shopping Center - Breath: A Novel
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List Price: $23.00
Our Price: $15.64
Your Save: $ 7.36 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780374116347
ISBN: 0374116342
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2008-05-27
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: 2008-05-27
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Reviews:
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Tim Winton is Australia’s best-loved novelist. His new work,Breath, is an extraordinary evocation of an adolescence spent resisting complacency, testing one’s limits against nature, finding like-minded souls, and discovering just how far one breath will take you. It’s a story of extremes—extreme sports and extreme emotions.  On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrillseeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. But where is all this heading? Why is their mentor’s past such forbidden territory? And what can explain his American wife’s peculiar behavior? Venturing beyond all limits—in relationships, in physical challenge, and in sexual behavior—there is a point where oblivion is the only outcome. Full of Winton’s lyrical genius for conveying physical sensation, Breath is a rich and atmospheric coming-of-age tale from one of world literature’s finest storytellers.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Another Fine Tim Winton Novel
Comment: Australian writer Tim Winton's latest short novel (217 pages), unlike some of his previous novels--CLOUDSTREET and DIRT MUSIC come to mind-- is one that you can devour in one sitting for it will pull you down into it like the undertow that this fantastic writer writes about with such breathtaking beauty. We see the events unfold through the eyes of Bruce, now a gnarly-- one of Winton's favorite words-- paramedic in his 50's who recalls events that transpired when he was a budding teenager in the small town of Sawyer, Australia.
The novel begins with Bruce and a woman partner answering an emergency call from a distraught family whose teenaged son apparently has committed suicide by hanging. Then the narrator jumps back in time to his youth and talks for many pages about his friend Loonie and their strange relationship-- a sort of hero worship on the part of Bruce-- with an exotic former surfing champion Sando who pushes the boys to newer and more dangerous heights as they take on more and more difficult waves as they strive to rise from being just ordinary. Then there is Sando's American wife Eva.
BREATH is a strange novel indeed. If you are wondering what a teenager's suicide has to do with all this surfing on the Australia coast, as I was, just be patient for Mr. Winton ties up all the loose ends with a powerful wallop. The novel is a coming-of-age novel about sexual awakening, the danger associated with the emotions if they are left to run rampant when you are thirteen or fourteen, the scars that remain in adulthood.
I am always fascinated when writers from other parts of the world write about Americans. Eva tells Bruce what it was like growing up in Salt Lake City, Mormons and American ambition. "But the way Eva told it, her countrymen were restless, nomadic, clogging freeways and airports in their fevered search for action. She said they were driven by ambition in a way that no Australian could possibly understand. . . She made her own people sound vicious. Yet God was in everything - all the talk, all the music, even on their money. Ambition, she said. Aspiration and mortal anxiety." Mr. Winton has homed in admirably on the contemporary American psyche.
Tim Winton's language is always appropriate and often completely beautiful--from creating new verbs (rag-dolling) to describing surfing when Bruce contrasts the practicality of Sawyer's farmers, loggers and millers who "did solid, practical things" with the beauty and grace of surfers. "How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared." And he expresses his own feelings about surfing: "but for me there was still the outlaw feeling of doing something graceful, as if dancing on water was the best and bravest thing a man could do."
Tim Winton is one terrific writer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Alone in purgatory
Comment: This strikes me as one of Winton's more complex, challenging books. Each character is alone and on trial in the face of elemental realities--the sea, the weather, the sky, sexuality, the vastness of the world. Is there any better metaphor for that separateness, your own spiritual that-ness, than an awareness of your own breathing? The middle-aged narrator recalling his pivotal youth is living an extended after word to those years of awakening. But he has survived, which is much more than any other character in the book has achieved. The picture of what it means to be human in this portrayal is bleak. Yet the novel itself is well written, achieves beauty=truth clarity. The perspective that I got--and maybe it takes someone way more sophisticated at this critical reading and reflection than I am to explain how and why--is that this is only one way that life can be lived. Winton is not writing as if the novel portrays the single human condition, but rather that all of this is a cautionary tale.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Wave
Comment: This lyrical novel about surfing (and autoasphyxiating sex) takes the coming of age novel to new heights. The writing reminded me of Meg Rosoff's book What I Was, but by the time you get to the end, this is even darker and more disturbing. Can't shake those final images. Take a deep breath.....
Customer Rating:
Summary: Breathless am I after reading Breath
Comment: Yesterday morning I finished reading Tim Winton's Breath and was fairly useless for the rest of the day as I rolled all of it over and over in my head like surf approaching the shore.
My first reaction was: Wow, finest kind. My next reaction was: but, in the end, there's no story because 3/4 of the novel is a story and last quarter is a rambling kind of closure. My third reaction was -- in the end, there is no end. And: who you start our to be might not be who you end up to be. Then, maybe there's salvation in ordinary that isn't available outside of the club. I'm still reacting but my current focus is the language in this book is nigh perfect and I like the focus on that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Surfing the monsters waves with Breath...
Comment: Breath is told from the view of a 14 year old boy and his coming of age during the 1970's with his danger seeking best friend, Loonie, and their surfing Guru, Sando coupled with his wife Eva. The group seeks to push the envelope harder and harder facing their fears in a spiral of adrenaline rushes. Once the characters overcome the waves they seek new fear-thrills though the use of Sport and breath control. Winton's description of the sport will take you there. You will ask yourself what is ordinary? Where do we cross the line? And Why do people seek to play on the balance beam between life and death? This is a well written Adult book with great characters (do not recommend for Adolescents and Teens- contains sex, drugs and edgy thrills- all meant for mature readers).
Winton writes using every nuance of english language including Australian slang. As in all Winton's books you have a strong sense of the land (and water), it's power and spiritual undertones. A most enjoyable book.... A great beach read!
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