Barracuda
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
​Après le succès international deLa Gifle, le grand retour de l'enfant terrible des lettres australiennes. Porté par un style à fleur de peau, un roman coup-de-poing sur le dépassement de soi, le sacrifice, l'échec et la reconstruction, avec en toile de fond toutes les contradictions d'une nation bâtie sur le racisme et la violence.
Daniel Kelly sort de prison.
Vingt ans plus tôt, il était Danny " Barracuda ", le grand espoir de la natation australienne. Un adolescent rageur, animé par la soif de vaincre, tout entier tendu vers un seul but : devenir champion. Pour n'être plus le petit métèque, fils d'une coiffeuse grecque et d'un routier australien. Pour montrer à ces petits bourges pour qui tout semble facile que lui, le boursier, peut les battre. Pour ne plus être prisonnier de ce corps encombrant, de ces pensées qui lui viennent dans les vestiaires.
Aujourd'hui, Daniel est ce champion déchu qui a commis l'irréparable. Il est cet homme que la prison a à la fois brisé et révélé. Il est ce fils, ce frère qui veut se réconcilier avec les siens. Il est cet adulte qui va devoir une dernière fois se confronter à l'ado qu'il était pour mieux tenter de revivre...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tsiolkas (The Slap) tells the story of the pressures of trying to live up to high expectations. Relentlessly bullied at the elite Australian private high school he attends on scholarship, working-class Dan Kelly shows early promise as a swimmer. With the hopes of his parents, coach, and suddenly envious classmates riding on him, Dan becomes fixated on winning at all costs. But when he places fifth at his first international championship race, he breaks down, lashing out violently at his former friends and turns to alcohol for consolation. When a masochistic affair with the wealthy Martin Taylor brings Dan's sexual identity to the fore, he finds himself at the breaking point and comes close to committing murder. He spends some time in prison, and, after his release, he travels to his family's homeland in Glasgow, where he falls in love with the angelic Clyde. But before he can get too involved, he must return to Australia, face his mistakes, and try to reconcile with his struggling family. The novel has all the early signs of a classic failure narrative along the lines of Exley's A Fan's Notes, but it loses direction in its second half. Additionally, the alternating chapters in which the contemporary Dan speaks in the first-person are actually more distant than the more affecting third-person parts. This story never quite realizes its full potential but Tsiolkas's sincerity qualifies it as solidly middleweight.
