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Bruce
Bruce Pike is the narrator and protagonist of Breath. Looking back from middle age, he tells the story of his adolescence in the 1970s, in the rugged coastal countryside of Western Australia. An only…
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Loonie
Loonie is Bruce’s best friend. The two meet as boys when Loonie has pranked a family into believing he’s drowning. This incident encapsulates Loonie’s character: as his name might suggest, he is gleefully unrestrained…
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Sando
Sando is a 36-year-old former celebrity surfer who takes the teenage Bruce and Loonie under his wing. To the impressionable local boys, the masterful surfer cuts a powerful and mysterious figure on the waves. Sando…
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Eva
Eva is Sando’s wife and, eventually, Bruce’s lover. Like Sando, she is a former extreme-sports celebrity (freestyle ski-jumping, in her case), but her career ended abruptly and painfully in a knee injury. She…
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Bruce’s Father
Bruce’s father is a man of few words. He and Bruce’s mother are on the older side, and they are both somewhat fearful and disapproving of the world beyond their little sawmill town. They…
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Bruce’s Mother
Bruce’s mother, like his father, is a conservative person and had Bruce at a relatively old age. Also like his father, she communicates very little explicitly. After Bruce takes up hardcore surfing, she…
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Karl Loon
Karl Loon is Loonie’s father. He is a veteran of World War II—although it’s not clear for which side he fought. Karl is separated from Loonie’s mother before Bruce and Loonie ever meet, and…
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Queenie Cookson
Queenie Cookson is Bruce’s girlfriend for a period in high school. The two haunt the library at the same hours, and eventually Queenie simply decides that they are a couple, to which Bruce doesn’t…
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Slipper
Slipper is an older boy whom Bruce and Loonie meet in the waves on one of their early attempts at surfing. He has a red afro hairstyle, and he aggressively peer-pressures Bruce and Loonie into…
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Margaret Myers
Margaret Myers is a sex worker who takes up residence in the room above Loonie’s family pub. Loonie burrows a spyhole into the wall of her room and watches her with clients, regaling Bruce…
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Grace Andrews
Grace Andrews is the woman Bruce marries as an adult. She is a zoology teacher whom Bruce meets while working as a lab technician. At the time of their marriage, Bruce is the happiest he’s…
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Jodie
Jodie is Bruce’s partner in his job as a paramedic. Bruce catches her bad-mouthing him on the phone, and she feels badly about it. Bruce, however, understands that she is just inexperienced and that…
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June
June is the mother of the dead boy at the scene Bruce and Jodie are called to in Chapter 1. She’s muted but angry with grief, and she seems to know more than she lets…
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Desmond
Desmond is a Bible-thumping fellow resident of a psych ward in which Bruce places himself at some point in his adulthood. Desmond tries to convince Bruce that he is a “captive of evil,” but Bruce…
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Minor Characters
Defrocked Priest
During his aimless adulthood struggles with addiction, Bruce meets a defrocked priest who helps him sober up. The two live on the shore of a salt lake for six months, and the priest—a former alcoholic—offers Bruce enigmatic, mystical advice.
