I have
always loved books set in Australia. I don’t know why. It’s probably Bryce
Courtenay’s doing. And then Paullina Simons’. And now … yup … it’s all down to
Christos Tsiolkas, whose fourth novel, The
Slap, rocked my cynical literary socks.
With its unapologetic depiction of Australia’s racial, sexual and familial politics, The Slap astonished me. So I grabbed Barracuda, Tsiolkas’ next effort, with
no small measure of glee. And it didn’t disappoint.
(In fact, I told my husband that I was taking special pains to read it
slowly, so it would take longer to finish. And when it did, I was utterly
bereft.)
If you’ve read The
Slap – even if you haven’t – you’ll know that it kicks off with its major
event: a stranger klapping someone else’s bratty kid at a barbecue.
In contrast, Barracuda
makes you wait (almost) until the end before revealing its trump card. A very
different experience. A very different cast of characters. A very different ebb
and flow. And a very, very different portrayal of conflict.
In The Slap,
we’re voyeurs to the ugly conflicts within and between ethnic communities. In Barracuda, we see the ugly conflict
within a young man’s own soul.
Daniel Kelly is a
working class ‘wog’ who gets into a posh school on a swimming scholarship,
where he stands out among schoolmates with ‘the clearest skin he had ever seen
and the best cut hair and the whitest and most perfect teeth.’
This experience
moulds him into ‘Barracuda’: a violent teen for whom winning is the only way to
deal with the teasing of his schoolmates and the sacrifices of his family.
Along the way, we encounter the brutal physicality of competitive sport
and the pitiless grip of failure and shame that comes when you‘re no longer a
super-jock.
What’s so interesting about the way Tsiolkas writes is that, as another
reviewer put it, “[he] is…clear-eyed about the way hatred can hold communities
together. He calls racism by its name, but is not ashamed to dig around in the
experience of racism and its effects.” And all of this culminates in an ending
t both believable and life-affirming.
If you loved Courtenay’s Australian novels of
yester-year, Tully by Paullina Simons
or Tsiolkas’s The Slap, read Barracuda. It’s utterly brilliant.
. This, despite not being a fan of Australia at all. Perhaps it’s because I like colonial settings? Perhaps because I like tales of struggle and strife? Perhaps because Australian writers write well? Whatever... The fact is, if it’s a book set in Oz in the 1800s or so, I’m into it in seconds.
– of whom I’d never heard. Positioned as ‘the master of the Australian historical blockbuster’, Yeldham has written several books about and set in the dry land down under, and is considered to be a king of his genre. Yeeha! A new friend for me.
and so far, have loved them.)