BOOKS

Teenager Danny Kelly is poised for greatness as a swimmer and he knows it. He possesses all the physical requirements (technique, strength, and stamina) and mental attributes (supreme self-confidence and determination) to win. Unfortunately, Danny doesn’t confine his killer impulse to the pool. He is a wild man, the barracuda of the book’s title, and sometimes that aggressive, cruel nature erupts. Danny can be dangerous. The novel is structured in two separate narrative strands, and they are doled out as alternative chapters. In the first, Danny wins a scholarship to an exclusive Melbourne private high school that boasts a swimming program that aims to mould him into an Olympic champion. In the second strand, Danny goes by Dan, a disaster has derailed his dreams and he no longer swims. Instead, he has been in jail.

This is Christos Tsiolkas’s first novel since the international success of The Slap. At over 500 pages, this is a big book but it is highly readable and absolutely engrossing (though, curiously, the opening chapter is rather flat). Readers who can’t abide a main character who is often unlikable should probably look elsewhere. Dan/Danny is complicated and flawed, and in the second narrative strand he is badly damaged, though more aware of his own needs and limitations. His sexuality also comes to the fore in this second part. After the stint in jail, he has developed a taste for gay sex. As a teenage schoolboy, he was basically asexual, always conserving his energy, and with an occasional crush on a girl. Tsiolkas’s usual theme of class is explored in the privileged private school setting, while multicultural Australia is represented across a diverse cast of characters. Danny himself is the offspring of a Greek hairdresser mother and Scottish truck-driving father.

Following up The Slap would have been no easy feat, but Tsiolkas has cleverly risen to the challenge. The subject of a swimming champion and the book’s sheer readability give it a commercial edge, yet he hasn’t muted the gay sexuality or political sensibility that he is so well known for. Barracuda even includes a few moments of graphic gay sexual desire that may startle his new mainstream readership! Tsiolkas has delivered a novel that should satisfy his many readers and win him even more – it deserves to be the book everyone is reading and talking about this summer.