Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Slap (soon to be an NBC miniseries) returns in an “immensely moving” (Sunday Times) story of a young athlete’s coming of age Fourteen-year-old Daniel Kelly is special. Despite his upbringing in working-class Melbourne, he knows that his astonishing ability in the swimming pool has the potential to transform his life, silence the rich boys at the private … his life, silence the rich boys at the private school to which he has won a sports scholarship, and take him far beyond his neighborhood, possibly to international stardom and an Olympic medal. Everything Danny has ever done, every sacrifice his family has ever made, has been in pursuit of this dream. But what happens when the talent that makes you special fails you? When the goal that you’ve been pursuing for as long as you can remember ends in humiliation and loss?
Twenty years later, Dan is in Scotland, terrified to tell his partner about his past, afraid that revealing what he has done will make him unlovable. When he is called upon to return home to his family, the moment of violence in the wake of his defeat that changed his life forever comes back to him in terrifying detail, and he struggles to believe that he’ll be able to make amends. Haunted by shame, Dan relives the intervening years he spent in prison, where the optimism of his childhood was completely foreign.
Tender, savage, and blazingly brilliant, Barracuda is a novel about dreams and disillusionment, friendship and family, class, identity, and the cost of success. As Daniel loses everything, he learns what it means to be a good person—and what it takes to become one.
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Tempting though it is to begin with a pun about how Barracuda dives under the surface of Australian identity, it doesn’t quite work. This is a book about a swimming champion, a cultural and class misfit, about social and personal limitations. It’s also about carving out an identity, whether in water or stone. Tsiolkas writes with both the savagery of a machete and the precision of a scalpel.
Danny/Daniel/Barracuda has a talent, which earns him a scholarship at a private school in Melbourne, an exceptional coach, the apparent respect of his peers and a determination for the future. He has a clear ambition and his future is all mapped out.
The narrative takes an unexpected turn, leaping to the future, when adult Dan and his partner Clyde, are living in Glasgow. Dan’s a carer for people with brain injuries – and he’s good at it – but he won’t swim.
The narrative switches between the build-up to the Sydney Olympics and the much-later aftermath, hinting at a pivotal event which changes the Barracuda’s course. It’s intense, in feeling, colour, place, strata and time. Danny is one of those rare characters you want to fight and fight for at the same time.
One of the most endearing set pieces comes when Dan accompanies his mother to Adelaide, to say farewell to his maternal grandmother. He meets his cousin Dennis, learns more about family dynamics and understands a bit more about what happens when he doesn’t come first.
Brilliantly structured and viciously observant, this book delivers a youthful searing rage and a mature sense of relative awareness in extraordinarily cool prose.
Let me start off by saying that picking up Barracuda wasn’t a choice. I didn’t choose to read this novel, it was a case of I had too. I won’t explain why, but please just know that it was a case of had too not want too.
I have never heard of this author, so I was literally going in blind. All I had was the synopsis and not much else.
As I sit here reflecting on what I’ve read the first thought that comes to mind is that I did enjoy this novel. Although at times I found it a little repetitive and going from present to past tense was at times somewhat confusing, I still enjoyed Barracuda.
We meet Danny Kelly and this is his story from childhood right through to adulthood.
We meet a boy who is driven.
We meet a man who is defeated.
We meet a boy who’s bullied.
We meet a man who’s scarred.
We meet a teenager who falls from grace.
We meet a man who constantly lives with regret.
We meet a teenager who thinks he has failed everyone.
We meet a man who thinks he has failed everyone.
We meet a teenager who changes his own course for all the wrong reasons.
We meet a man who wants forgiveness.
A detailed, in-depth read that had me completely immersed. What I loved most about this novel was the exploration of Danny’s life growing up wanting and needing to be a champion, the need to succeed, the failures, the mistakes, the hurt, the distrust, the need for perfection, the abuse, the uncertainty, the bullying, the triumphs. It explored every facet of life which most of us can relate too.
The only fault I found which is just a personal opinion is (as stated earlier) I had a slight struggle with the going back and forth from young boy to man (past and present). I guess I would have loved to have seen Danny’s story from a young boy and followed it through to adolescence and then into adulthood.
An enjoyable read.
3 stars