Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

Christos Tsiolkas follows up the award-winning mega-hit The Slap, with a gentle examination of failure, success and the ever-shifting grey bits in between. Working class antihero Danny Kelly earns a swimming scholarship to a posh private school, which he promptly nicknames Cunts College, where the self-professed hairy, gay “wog” very evidently doesn’t fit the mould. He resolves to earn the respect of the golden boys by being the strongest, the fastest and the best. The action skits backwards and forwards through time, from Kelly’s less-than-happy schooldays, through a prison spell and out the far side, as he tries to come to terms with who he is outside the confines of the pool. Highly readable without being riveting, Barracuda is an enjoyable but inessential dip into a flawed life, well lived.