The Mindless Ferocity of Sharks
by Brett D'Arcy

• State Library of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

Eleven year-old Floaty-boy (so named because of his passion for body-surfing and peculiar talent for buoyancy) inhabits a murky, watery world of wagging school and illicit night surfing. He is in between - neither boy nor man - and hovers on the edges of his existence: the reefs and ledges of the ocean when he bodysurfs and the fringes of a family that seems to be spinning out of control. Headstrong yet vulnerable, Floaty-boy is as prey to the jagged edges of his perception as he is to the sharks that cruise the out-of-bounds world of Down Below.

At the centre of Floaty-boy's universe is Adelaide - mother, wife, surfer, and breadwinner, who holds not only her own family together but the knockabout Cronies of her larrikin husband, the Old Man. Yet when her eldest son, Eddie, disappears, her family's world threatens to fall apart; her centre may not hold and Floaty-boy has to find a way to cope.

This is a mesmerising and beautifully imagined coming-of-age novel.

Brett D'Arcy was born in Perth, Australia in 1963. Amongst other thing, he has worked as a barman, an English tutor and an antiques and collectibles scout. He is the author of one previous novel, The Book of Lonely, which is to be the subject of a feature film. The Mindless Ferocity of Sharks won the 2003 WA Premier's Award for Fiction.