![]() ![]() The central theme of Tim Winton’s beautiful coming-of-age novel is as simple as it is elegant: Breath is like grace, you can’t live without it. But he also takes them into dangerous waters, where waves are the size of buildings and sharks lurk. He instructs the boys in all aspects of surfing: reading the weather, shaping boards, determining currents and underwater topography. When they discover Sando was once a famous competitive surfer, their admiration turns to hero worship. In time, the boys are befriended by Sando and his wife, hippie-types who live near the beach. ![]() ![]() Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared.” Pikelet’s response is powerful: “How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Tired of the river, the boys find their way to the ocean and watch the surfers. But each boy spurs on the other harder and further, connecting them to what later becomes a vital force in their lives: the need for extreme physical challenges-the more frightening, the more dangerous, the better. At first, the troubled and reckless “Loonie” seems an unlikely friend for the quieter “Pikelet”, whose parents, like most locals, view nature with ambivalence. As adolescents, Bruce Pike and Ivan Loon cause riverside panic by diving down deep and holding on to the tree roots a the bottom until their heads are full of stars and those above imagine they’ve drowned. ![]()
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