Rule the Waves

The two boys are soon addicted to the thrill of riding the waves, but the bravado soon shifts to something more serious after they encounter Sando, a hippified surfer with a secret history and a sullen wife called Eva. Sando gets them hooked to the devil in the deep blue sea, as they seek heightened dangers, more treacherous waters. 8220;Loonie and I strove to outdo each other, to take off as late as possible, to drop in with the studied nonchalance we copied from Sando, and then steer up into the shimmering cave each wave made of itself. Inside those waves our voices bounced back at us, deeper and larger for all the noise, like the voices of men. We felt stronger, older. We came howling from the gullet of wave upon wave and stopped believing in the shark altogether.8221;
Breath is also a meditation on the loose companionship and competition that course through male friendships. Loonie is a wonderful character, with his split-lip grin, daring Pikelet, badgering 8220;till the point you challenged him to do something you had no interest in him doing8221;. Compared with Loonie8217;s endless and 8220;aimless reservoir of physical bravery8221; that somehow constricts his subtler feelings, Pikelet is held back not only by his fear, but also his thoughtfulness, his incapacity to entirely thrill to the triumph of surviving incredibly dangerous situations. In contrast, after Loonie hurls himself into harm8217;s way and emerges, battered, on the other side, he looks at the 8220;weird dilating eye of the wave8221; and gives it the finger, later wishing that someone had a camera to freeze the moment. Sando puts a more transcendent spin to the stunts 8212; 8220;It8217;s about you. You and the sea, you and the planet8230; the rest of it is just sport and recreation.8221;

But Pikelet is still moved more by the useless beauty of surfing, even though he savours the risk and the 8220;sense of having walked on water8221;. He is also disturbed by the strange fix he craves 8212; but then, as an older, saner Bruce Pike rationalises, this was just one thralldom among others in the 8217;60s and 8217;70s, a time when all sorts of fierce allegiances sprouted around the world, when some boys were dying in Vietnam and others were joining hippie cults 8212; 8220;Sando appealed to one set of boyish fantasies and the state exploited others8221;.
Breath is a beguilingly easy read, and stray sentences leap out in their beauty 8212; the yellow blur of Sando8217;s board, the glossy back of the wave 8212; there8217;s both precision and poetry, and a loose joy in Winton8217;s writing especially in the early chapters. But as the novel gets steadily darker, the pull of death-defying danger appears more morbid than life-affirming, and Pikelet ultimately severs links from his old obsessions and companions. But the marvel of Breath is still those exulting early moments 8212; and despite the lessons learnt, Pike judges 8220;every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living8221;.