Tim Winton "Breath"

I picked up a copy of "Breath." It won the Miles Franklin award. Winton is a renowned Australian author. I thought, it's all good.

When reading the first chapter, I was captivated. I wanted to know more about this misunderstood middle aged man. I wanted to decipher why people thought he was strange, why he had an insight into the death of a teenage boy that his paramedic partner couldn't grasp. I loved the wording, I loved the style. And then it was gone. My engagement completely evaporated.

Roughly three quarters of the novel is a meditation on Pikelet's adolescence. We get a glimpse of his precarious connection to and ultimate detachment from his family. We become familiar with his other relationships; his mateship with Loony, his adoration for Sando and Eva Sanderson, awkward failed romances between a teenage girl and his mentor's wife. We are introduced to his surroundings and how he spends his time. We follow him in his quest to ascertain his own identity. Most of these are universal themes. Therefore, it would stand to reason that a reader would have recognition of, if not empathy for Pikelet's experience. I didn't. Which is odd. I often write from the perspective of a teenager. I'm emotionally and mentally still probably only about sixteen. I still remember that part of my life clearly, and believe it has shaped me like no other period. So why was there no connection, and pretty much no interest for me in Pikelet's nostalgic memoir?

The absence of identification is the predominant reason. Although often used as metaphor, or an explanation of the mechanics of Pikelet's mind, the bulk of "Breath" is about surfing. I don't do sport. I don't get sport. And I guess I can't get past that. Whilst a lot of Pikelet's surfing was about experimenting with boundaries, recognising how close to the edge he could travel, where his flirtation with danger would take him, to me it was still about bloody surfing. These are all concepts (or a single concept explained in different ways) that I can identify with, but it wasn't expressed in a way that allowed me access. Some peeps in a GoodReads discussion reflected on the novel's ability to return them to a time of Summers long gone when they traveled to the coast and met the archetypal characters written about here. I never went to the coast as a child . I never met those people. I didn't have a gateway to this world provided by my own previous experience and Winton didn't create a space that filled in the gaps for my lack, or offer a literary landscape in which my lack didn't matter.

Even the relationships were really hard to care about. Pikelet and Moody's friendship encapsulates solidarity, jealousy, a sense of suffocation. We've all been there. Maybe it is a gender thing, but I couldn't relate, or feel, or care and I really thought I should have. His relationship with Sando, the adult ex-pro surfer is a little more complex and interesting. There is awe, idolisation, lust for approval then finally, hurt and betrayal. Again it didn't trigger the emotive response that it should have. It was only during the course of his encounter with Eva that any kind of legitimate feelings seemed to pass. Reflections on the erratic energy between the pair, swinging from lust, to love, to hate and back again seemed to evoke a passion dormant in Winton's protagonist until now. Again a range of emotions are explored; guilt, disgust, infatuation take place as these two lonely, misplaced individuals find a connection, but for the first time, it rings true.

In the last 17 pages Pikelet provides a concise summary of his life here after. This is the man I wanted to meet all along. I want to know why his marriage finally fell apart, seeing the reasons cited as only fractions of the whole equation. I wanted to know why he was institutionalised, why he carries the stigma of perversity, when he was never a willing participant, and if it's just because he thinks pregnant women look sexy, then maybe I'm less prudish than I thought. These questions are never really answered. The component that could have made this a great, great novel seems skimmed almost to the extent of being a succession of footnotes.

I finally did identify with Pikelet, or Bruce Pike as he is again called in adulthood. But it took until the last ten pages before the book's closure.