Breathe - Tim Winton

*Plot Spoiler Below*

I am the first to admit I am not a member of the Tim Winton Fan Club, though I do read his stuff and even like it when I do and seem to tear through them with alarming speed for someone who tries desperately to make books last longer. The four hours it took me to make it from cover to cover for this book is a case in point - I still had 7 HOURS on a bus to go - and would have loved to have taken longer. I think I read Winton's books so quickly because I am one, in a sense.

Winton has this ability to capture a side of Australia I feel like a know very well, and it takes me no time at all to put on my dusty board shorts and struggle up the hill with my cheap but treasured surf board on a Saturday morning with the two boys in these pages. Breathe itself is a mix of childhood, masculinity, surfing, failure and ... auto-erotic asphyxiation. Even now as I type this I wonder what drew Winton to go all Michael Hutchence on his readers, and I don't really like it. That aside though, I did love reading everything else between the covers. I'm not quite sure it deserved the fan fare it received in Australia though, but I am glad I've read it.