Barracuda
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3.9 • 195 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
He asked the water to lift him, to carry him, to avenge him. He made his muscles shape his fury, made every stroke declare his hate. And the water obeyed; the water would give him his revenge. No one could beat him, no one came close.
His whole life, Danny Kelly's only wanted one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he's ever done-every thought, every dream, every action-takes him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world will see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best. His life has been a preparation for that moment.
His parents struggle to send him to the most prestigious private school with the finest swimming program; Danny loathes it there and is bullied and shunned as an outsider, but his coach is the best and knows Danny is, too, better than all those rich boys, those pretenders. Danny's win-at-all-cost ferocity gradually wins favour with the coolest boys-he's Barracuda, he's the psycho, he's everything they want to be but don't have the guts to get there. He's going to show them all.
He would be first, everything would be alright when he came first, all would be put back in place. When he thought of being the best, only then did he feel calm.
Should we teach our children to win, or should we teach them to live? How do we make and remake our lives? Can we atone for our past? Can we overcome shame? And what does it mean to be a good person?
A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap, Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern Australia, at our hopes and dreams, our friendships, and our families. It is about class and sport and politics and migration and education. It contains everything a person is: family and friendship and love and work, the identities we inhabit and discard, the means by which we fill the holes at our centre. Barracuda is brutal, tender and blazingly brilliant; everything we have come to expect from this fearless vivisector of our lives and world.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The author of The Slap—one of the most iconic Australian novels of the past decade—returns with an equally triumphant novel about modern life. Filled with biting sarcasm, human frailty, piercing truths and hard-won redemption, Barracuda dissects the story of Danny Kelly, a competitive swimmer propelled by adversity and rage.
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.
Customer Reviews
The swimmer
A beautiful insight into a the joys and pain of a boy's struggle to fulfil his dream of being the fastest and the strongest swimmer with the added backdrop of struggling with his sexuality and being a migrant, thus a minority .. an outsider...
Long winded
Enjoyed The Slap but this book was quite a saga. More 'annoyance' than 'substance'. Didn't seem to go anywhere and was confusing with its time lines.
An emotional roller coaster
Dan's relationship with his family, friends and peers is realistic, provoking, kind, brutal and always fascinating. Tsioklas invokes the reader to keep reading to discover if Dan can find more meaning in life finds than winning a race. I was swept along by the powerful story.