"Breath" is Tim Winton at his finest: a beautiful, gripping, deeply moving novel about our need for excitement and to push ourselves to the limits; about the power of the sea; and how ordinary people live with tragedy. When Loonie and Pikelet started to surf, they cycled from Angelus to the beach with their styrofoam boards, buffeted by the wind and, when they finally get to the sea, the waves. They couldn t help it: they were terrified; they were addicted. Among the local surfers, one guy stood out. He turned up alone, when the swell was highest, and left the rest of them for dead. Gradually Loonie and Pike got to know this loner, Sando, who took them under his wing. Half a lifetime later, Pike can t free himself from where the ride took him. With "Breath," Tim Winton s writing has attained a new level of mastery. This book confirms his standing alongside Ian McEwan and Philip Roth as one of the major chroniclers of the human condition, a writer of novels that are at the same time simple and profound, relentlessly gripping and deeply moving. One of "Publisher Weekly" s Best Books of the Year 2008."