Ruling the waves

Tim Winton is a prodigy among novelists, publishing his first novel when barely out of his teens and one of the great masterpieces of world fiction when only just 30. Like many such novelists — Thomas Mann and Javier Marias come to mind — his later work has tended to explore exquisite technical points, inviting his readers to exert their capacities within a structure unfamiliar and often

cryptic. The Turning, his previous book, seemed, like Confessions of Felix Krull, to challenge the reader to bring a high level of cunning to match his own virtuosity. Like many such writers, too, he has retained a degree of respect for fictional textures of lucid simplicity. Breath is the work of a writer of unusual technical command, but it presents no more challenge than a picture window on a huge tranquil sea. In an odd way, it reads somewhat like his first books, written by a novelist who, to a peerless degree, has learnt how to do it.