—"Breath," by Tim Winton; Picador paperback ($14, 224 pages)

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The first time I read Australian writer Tim Winton was in 2002 when his seventh novel, "Dirt Music," came out. Within a few pages, I was bowled over, seduced first by his language, the easy way he slung around the vernacular yet laced his sentences with precise images — the startling elasticity, the beauty of it all.

In time came other seductions — gritty, lonely characters treated with subtle respect; gorgeous, epic-like landscapes; a plot that unfolded steadily but naturally; and a quietly wise exploration of human psychology.

"Breath," Winton's latest novel, his eighth, is no different. Now out in paperback, it's a coming-of-age tale that manages to seem fresh, for its young protagonist discovers not only the powerful lure of sex but also the powerful thrill of testing oneself against nature. The story unfolds easily, with language that bucks and flows in irresistible hallmark Winton style.

Of all Winton's works, "Breath" relies most heavily on his own love of surfing. It's also set in a small fictional town, Angelus, on the coast of western Australia where Winton was raised, a region which is the setting of much of his fiction.

The novel opens with middle-aged paramedic Bruce Pike answering a distress call to a home where a teenager has hanged himself. The incident sets him remembering his own adolescence and the competitive friendships that drove them to seek danger, on a surfboard, in rough, shark-infested seas.

Pike, known as "Pikelet" in his youth, and his pal Loonie share a love for the ocean. Though forbidden by their cautious parents from the dangerous coast, they scrounge up crude surfboards and regularly sneak off to the beach. On one such trip, they meet the much older Sando, a mysterious but expert surfer who takes them under his wing, challenging them to take risks in order to master the wild waves. His young American wife, Eva, an injured freestyle skier, is just as mysterious, friendly one moment, distant the next. In this strange mix of relationships, Sando's influence and Eva's secret have long-lasting consequences for them all.

"Breath," naturally, is resplendent with surfing scenes, nearly all of them spectacular in Winton's hands.

"Mountains of water rose from the south; they rumbled by, gnawing at themselves, spilling tons of foam, and the half-spent force of them tore at my dangling legs," Winton writes in one scene. "There was just so much water moving out there, such an overload of noise and vibration; everything was at a scale I couldn't credit. I began to hyperventilate."

Geography is just as important in Winton's other works. In the Booker Prize-nominated "Dirt Music," Georgie Jutland, 40, lives on the wave-pounded coast with a widowed lobster fisherman. But emotionally empty, she is drawn into a passionate affair with Luther Fox, a fish poacher. The landscape shifts from the coast to gorges and desert country as Fox heads into the tropical wilderness after the community becomes violent.

In his classic 1992 bestseller, "Cloudstreet," the sense of place anchors the story of two working-class families in suburban Perth as they struggle to make sense of their lives in postwar Australia.

Though more narrowly focused than those two novels, "Breath" is still a stunner, suffering only at the end when the narrator continues to ruminate after the story has ended. Slight enough to finish in one sitting yet meaty with its themes of power and influence, "Breath" is an apt novel to read on the beach or anywhere else this summer.