FOR this reader, who has attempted surfing only once, and only long enough to be washed ashore seasick, the siren call of the waves is faint at best. But there's a saltiness in "Breath," Tim Winton's newest novel, that offers an irresistible taste of oceanic communion:
"All the way down the big board chattered against the surface chop; I could hear the giggle and natter of it over the thunder behind me. When the wave drew itself up to its full height, walling a hundred yards ahead as I swept down, it seemed to create its own weather. . . . For a moment -- just a brief second of enchantment -- I felt weightless, a moth riding light. Then I leant into a turn and accelerated and the force of it slammed through my knees, thighs, bladder, and I came lofting back to the crest to feel the land breeze in my face and catch a smudge of cliffs before sailing down the line again. . . . By the wave's last section I was styling."
Winton often locates a transcendent wisdom in nature, letting it guide his analogies to time, space, longing and the sort of existential entrapment that comes from being born into a particular place and culture. This is the recipe for his soaring popularity in his native Australia and also the reason he has garnered an international audience. In his best moments of controlled, evocative storytelling, though, Winton's descriptions eschew metaphor altogether and instead masterfully balance visual imagery with colloquial language. In "Breath," the waves underpin the episodic narrative, whose most vivid moments occur at sea. It achieves that essential quality of a short novel: Its poetry becomes its imperative, its motivating and most risky venture.
"Breath" is a coming-of-age tale set in the small town of Sawyer in western Australia. It is Winton's ninth novel -- he also has written three volumes of short stories, a handful of children's books and two works of nonfiction -- and it displays many of his familiar themes: the affecting power of landscape; failed intimacy between men, between parents and children, between lovers; the struggles and resignations of the semirural working-class life. But "Breath" is primarily the story of an education of the body -- and of how an emotional and moral countenance is shaped by the private physical experience of desire.
