Tarántula

Bruce Pike is eleven years old and lives in a logging town near the wild coast of Western Australia. Loner by nature, he hates the quiet customs of his family, but everything changes when he becomes friends with Loonie, an impulsive and rebellious boy with whom he will begin to become interested in swimming and diving and, later, surfing. As he becomes a teenager, his obsession with surfing grows, especially when they meet Sando, an enigmatic and veteran surfer who will introduce them to an addictive world of increasingly dangerous challenges. Originally published in 2008, Breathe is one of the most beloved classics of recent Australian literature, a solid formative novel in which the overwhelming nature of the country permeates the entire story. A work that, in its portrait of friendship during adolescence and the rites of passage to adulthood, explores like few others the intensity of the first times and the difficulty of staying afloat and breathing after having lived too quickly.