Recommendations
Books Like Barracuda
Best books to read after Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas
If Barracuda moved you — Danny Kelly's swimmer's arc from working-class Melbourne boy to scholarship student to failed athlete to someone who has to build a life from failure — these eight novels share its portrait of sport and class, its unflinching Australian social realism, or its investigation of what masculinity costs the men who are supposed to perform it.
- 1Buy
The Slap
by Christos Tsiolkas
Eight perspectives on a suburban Melbourne barbecue at which a man slaps another couple's child — Tsiolkas's most commercially successful novel is the most direct companion to Barracuda: the same Melbourne multicultural world, the same unflinching treatment of class and race and family, and the same interest in how violence reveals what is usually kept beneath the surface of Australian middle-class life; if Barracuda is organized around one person's failure, The Slap is organized around a community's different responses to a single incident
- 2Buy
The Ride
by Tim Parks
A competitive cyclist narrating a long solo ride as his marriage and career collapse around him — Parks's novel shares Barracuda's portrait of competitive sport as a structure of meaning that cannot survive contact with the rest of life; where Danny Kelly's failure arrives at a single catastrophic moment, Parks's narrator has been failing gradually for years, and the ride is both a literal activity and a way of avoiding the failure's implications
- 3Buy
Cloudstreet
by Tim Winton
Two working-class Perth families sharing a house across twenty years from 1943 to 1963 — Winton's celebrated novel is the Australian literary companion to Barracuda: the same working-class Australian family portrait, the same investment in what ordinary people build from loss, and the same attention to the specifically Australian landscape as both beauty and pressure; where Tsiolkas is Melbourne and Mediterranean, Winton is Perth and Protestant
- 4Buy
Saturday
by Ian McEwan
Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, spending a Saturday in February 2003 — the day of the London anti-war march — navigating a series of encounters that culminate in a confrontation with a dangerous man — McEwan's novel shares Barracuda's portrait of a man who has built his identity around a specific kind of excellence (surgery for Perowne, swimming for Danny) and must defend that identity against forces that don't recognize its value
- 5Buy
American Boy
by Larry Watson
A teenager in 1962 Minnesota observing his friend's glamorous father, a doctor, in a series of morally complex events — Watson's novel shares Barracuda's investigation of the gap between the man a boy is supposed to become and the man that circumstances allow him to be; both novels are about the moment when a young man's idealized version of himself first comes into conflict with what the world actually has in store for him
- 6Buy
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Amir and his guilt over Hassan's rape — Hosseini's debut shares Barracuda's engagement with a man who does something unforgivable in his youth and must spend his life trying to understand what it means; where Danny Kelly's crisis is a failure of performance (he doesn't win), Amir's crisis is a failure of courage (he doesn't act), and both novels ask whether the man who fails in a defining moment can ever become someone different
- 7Buy
Fever Pitch
by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby's memoir about his obsessive support for Arsenal football club and what it reveals about himself — Hornby's book is the nonfiction companion to Barracuda: the same investigation of what it means to organize your emotional life around sport, the same portrait of a masculine identity built on a team's or an athlete's performance, and the same uncomfortable examination of what happens when the sport cannot carry the weight of meaning you've put on it
- 8Buy
Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
Emira Tucker, a young Black babysitter, followed in a supermarket by a security guard who assumes she has kidnapped the white child she is caring for — Reid's debut shares Barracuda's interest in how class intersects with race and how well-meaning liberal assumptions can be just as damaging as overt prejudice; recommended for readers who were most interested in Barracuda's class analysis and its portrait of the private school world that Danny enters
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