Cassie McCullough

Johan, what did you make of those descriptions of these almost sort of crazy beautiful waves?

And it's a small book, but it is so powerful in the way that it takes you into breathlessness and fear and bravery.

But reading this next to Bluebird, it interested me that Bluebird was about living beside the ocean and breath is about being in it.

But I think both books are also about looking backwards at something and making sense of it.

So here's Tim Winton speaking on ABC Perth in 2008.

all those tomorrows and those dangerous yesterdays, because that reaching for the sublime and the beauty and the largeness, I mean, it did something to Pikelet.

And so I wonder what it makes us think about what bravery is, Stuart.

I mean, was Pikelet brave in saying, no, I'm not going to do that wave?

This struck me as a very poetic novel.

I mean, it's a story about these characters in a, you know, in a very specific place on the coast.

But you could almost read it like poetry.

And part of the poetry is the dance on the waves.

I mean, what do you make of its writing, Johan?

Tim Winton's Breath is published by Penguin.

Yeah, we'll be reading Gail Jones's just released novel, Our Shadow, set in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

And our older title to read alongside it is Randolph Stowe's The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, which was first published in 1965.

I'm Kate Evans.

Join us again on air on the ABC Listen app as a podcast for more books next time.

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I will not let your shadow hang over me.