Breath: A Novel

In Breath: A Novel by Tim Winton (HarperCollins), two teenaged boys come of age by holding their breath—first by swimming to the bottom of a lake and holding on to a tree root until their lungs are bursting and the people on the shore, who have seen them dive in and not come up, are calling for help or diving in to “save” them, and then by being thrown off their surfboards in huge waves and tumbling over and over in a chaos of water and bubbles until they can make their way back to the surface, where they throw up. The boys’ parents, like most of the town’s inhabitants, rarely go to the ocean, but the boys get both inspiration and instruction from an aging (thirty-six-year-old) and disillusioned world-class surfer, who rejects the limelight but still loves to risk his neck on the beautiful waves. This is an engrossing story that offers insight into the minds of adolescent boys, and it’s also a great way to feel the thrill and power of the big waves without actually surfing them.