After reading the first 70-something pages in fits and starts, I flew through the next 300 pages in one never-left-the-house day. Overall, I really enjoyed Mateo Askaripour’s Black Buck!
Darren is a 22-year-old Black man living with his mother in NYC. He was valedictorian of his high school and now works as a shift manager at Starbucks. He’s smart as heck but his dreams don’t extend past his current reality. (Which, I kept thinking, can’t that be ok/enough if he’s happy?)
When an exciting encounter with a startup manager opens the door for a new career opportunity, Darren reluctantly takes a chance on his future. What ensues is a series of ridiculous experiences— a roller coaster of highs and lows— and before long, Darren is unrecognizable to his family, friends, and neighbors. These characters provide a constant by which to measure Darren’s change: how he treats them, how they respond to him.
There’s a sense of, “oh shit, how’s this gonna fall apart?” for the first half of the book. By the time that snowball was cascading downhill, I was holding my breath hoping everything would resolve. The ending... on one hand I’m supremely disappointed with it. On the other hand, I’m shaking my head like, welp, that’s how it goes I guess.
Darren is a 22-year-old Black man living with his mother in NYC. He was valedictorian of his high school and now works as a shift manager at Starbucks. He’s smart as heck but his dreams don’t extend past his current reality. (Which, I kept thinking, can’t that be ok/enough if he’s happy?)
When an exciting encounter with a startup manager opens the door for a new career opportunity, Darren reluctantly takes a chance on his future. What ensues is a series of ridiculous experiences— a roller coaster of highs and lows— and before long, Darren is unrecognizable to his family, friends, and neighbors. These characters provide a constant by which to measure Darren’s change: how he treats them, how they respond to him.
There’s a sense of, “oh shit, how’s this gonna fall apart?” for the first half of the book. By the time that snowball was cascading downhill, I was holding my breath hoping everything would resolve. The ending... on one hand I’m supremely disappointed with it. On the other hand, I’m shaking my head like, welp, that’s how it goes I guess.