Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas – review

Recent accusations, threats and recriminations over sports scholarships among Sydney’s most prestigious private boys’ schools must surely have made Christos Tsiolkas hoot. But rather than evidence of life imitating art, they are more proof that Tsiolkas is a master chronicler of the zeitgeist.

In his latest novel, Barracuda, protagonist Danny Kelly is offered a sports scholarship to an elite private school after winning a regional swimming competition. Kelly remains an outsider at Cunts’ College – a title that is used ironically at first but is the only way the school is referred to throughout the book, lest you forget the context in which the boy is placed.

He could not be a worse fit among the privileged, upper-middle class, tall, blond, blue-eyed boys. They have the clearest skin, the best haircuts, the whitest and most perfect teeth. They don’t eat – they dine. Their fathers have share portfolios. Danny feels dirty and ugly. Their apparent superiority makes him all the more determined to win at all costs. To be the strongest, the fastest, the best. 

Don’t expect to like Danny. He doesn’t much like himself – the teenager epitomises the acute self-loathing adolescents are capable of. He is short, hirsute, self-centred, egotistical and obnoxious, with a huge chip on his shoulder and a tendency to become enraged when he feels slighted. The only way he can deal with being made to feel inferior is to resort to violence, earning his nickname “psycho Kelly”, and “Barracuda” for his deadly focus in the pool.

Danny’s mother is Greek and his father Scottish. She may have escaped an authoritarian father but can’t help lavishing attention on her son; her life revolving around his 4am swimming practice. Danny’s father is the more complex and interesting character, and it is through him that other contemporary concerns and social issues are explored. He fundamentally objects to all that would constitute a betrayal of his working class background, and Tsiolkas takes us through to a more nuanced understanding of such resentment. He is also the only person to challenge Danny’s selfishness.

This is a book about our glorification of sport, and what lies beneath all the cheering, the medals, the tears. Above all, it is a book about how we deal with failure, shame and humiliation. The chapters alternate between the story of young Danny Kelly, and Dan Kelly the adult. It soon becomes clear that Dan has been in prison: you know it is because Danny will not make it; will not be the best. When he fails at swimming, he will be left with nothing. He will be what he most fears – a nobody. 

Danny’s tendency towards intense shame, to lash out at others when he feels humiliated, seems certain to result in him hurting someone. The question is: who? Exactly what does he do, how does he cope with the consequences, how will he live with himself? Tsiolkas’ protagonist is so badly resourced that it is difficult to see how he will pull through, and whether he can develop the capacity to be a better human being. It’s a tribute to the writer’s skill that Daniel’s atonement and redemption are so credible. 

There is an undercurrent here: Australia is a nation obsessed with sport because we can and do excel at it – but without sport, who are we?

The book comes in two halves: Breathing In, and Breathing Out. Learning to be a different human being is as difficult as learning to breathe differently – and as fundamentally important. The first half of Barracuda catapults us towards the looming crisis, moving with great momentum. The second is less intense and less focused as Tsiolkas weaves other dimensions into Dan’s life.

Tsiolkas’ writing is most un-English. There is no understatement; no silences nor lilting musicality. The words hurtle out as he depicts characters trapped between irreconcilable worlds – middle class and working class, anglo and Greek, gay and straight, physical and intellectual, (there is no shortage of fetishistic sex and other bodily functions). Individuals who are intense, complex and flawed but must ultimately cleave towards tenderness and discover generosity. If the Slap was excellent material for a TV series, then Barracuda’s more substantial plot has all the hallmarks of a feature film.