Imagine the film ‘Wolf of Wall Street’. Specifically the point where the office is at its craziest, with all the shouting, tossing people around, etc. Now imagine a Black man, yanked out from behind the counter at Starbucks, being ushered in for an interview. That’s Darren, soon to be known as Buck. And that’s the vibe of Black Buck.
A satire, taking aim at American office culture, Black Buck is Mateo Askaripour’s debut novel. And it is a whirlwind of a novel.
Darren’s life is small, but not unhappy
At the opening of the story, Darren doesn’t have much going on. But he seems pretty much okay with that. He spends time with his girlfriend, Soraya, who wants to be a nurse. He lives with his mum and the two of them get along well. She works really hard, and wants Darren to make more of himself than he’s currently doing. He works at Starbucks, a job that he’s good at, and he gets along well with his coworkers there. Darren also has good relationships with others in his community, he’s the kind of guy who says hi to everyone he passes on his way to work.
He claims that he’s waiting for the right opportunity to take a step out of his comfort zone. And, in fairness, there are hints that he isn’t fully content. But ‘waiting’ is definitely the operative word. Darren has no plans to go out and find a new job, even as he essentially agrees he’s not fully fulfilled.
And then an opportunity does sort of appear out of nowhere. Darren pitches an alternative coffee to one of his regulars, who turns out to work in sales. Intrigued, he asks Darren to come by his office. It takes some pushing, but Darren eventually follows Rhett up to the 36th floor of the building – Sumwun’s offices. Almost before he knows it he’s one of the company’s new recruits, and this new chapter comes with a new name for him: Buck.
He doesn’t even like coffee
Coffee in the novel could be seen as a metaphor for corporate America, or at least some quality of it. At the beginning of the book, Darren doesn’t like it and doesn’t drink it. He doesn’t even see the appeal, describing it in pretty stark terms.
“Yes. I. Hate. Coffee. It’s black crack. Nothing more. Anyone who drinks coffee craves it, needs it, and shakes, scratches, jerks, and twerks for it every minute it’s not coursing through their collapsed veins.”
Black Buck, Mateo Askaripour
And yet, he works with it all day – is good at working with it, in fact. His mum drinks it at home, every morning, so he’s constantly surrounded by the smell of it. It’s inescapable.
In his first proper meeting with Rhett he reluctantly accepts a cup and finds it tastes better than he was expecting. Once he’s fully embraced being Buck we start to see him drinking it with far more regularity, but nothing suggests it’s something he actually enjoys. And he never turns as thoughtful or critical an eye on the habit again once he’s fallen down the rabbit hole.
Black Buck moves fast
This is a story where everything goes from zero to one hundred in about six seconds. Darren’s descent into sales-bro douche-baggery feels abrupt, and we don’t have as much time as I’d have liked to really care about all the relationships that disintegrate. Time is made to focus on some, but I found it hard to appreciate the full scope of the network collapse we were seeing.
The speediness does keep things interesting, and there’s a bit of a slow-down in the latter half of the novel to give readers a chance to catch up with what’s going on.
The pacing makes sense; since we know that Buck is heading for a fall (he’s told us as much) there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point building suspense around that. On the other hand, it might have been nice to dwell a little more on what was lost along the way. The amount of time spent savouring success felt about right, long enough to feel Buck’s satisfaction and start to get comfortable. Not so long that we could get bored of it.
The story makes use of direct addresses to the reader
The narrative style is very clearly Buck relaying the story to a specific audience. He makes clear that things didn’t end well, lending it the tone of a cautionary tale. At the same time, he provides clearly highlighted sales lessons throughout, suggesting he does feel there’s something worth emulating in his narrative. It creates an interesting tension, very ‘do as I say, not as I did’, and I enjoyed both components.
Buck’s direct address style also helps bring a greater sense of immediacy to the story’s events, which helps with the frantic atmosphere.
Race is a core theme of Black Buck
Probably unsurprisingly, given the title! Buck is the only Black person at Sumwun, something he notices immediately but nobody else seems to register (again, unsurprisingly). As a result, he’s often othered or outright discriminated against. He suffers some vile racist abuse, thinly excused as ‘hazing’, when he starts.
The theme also has a brighter expression in the narrative though. Connecting with other young people of colour, and finding a way to give them more opportunities in the overwhelmingly white field Buck has broken into, is an important plot point. And it gives Buck a path to finding a way, if not back to who he was, at least forwards into somebody more healthy and happy.
The comedy side of the story didn’t always shine for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed it
This might be partly an audience thing; I’m sure there were elements of humour that went over my head. I did find the book an easy read, and a fun one, even if I didn’t find it as overtly funny as some of the blurb comments described it. It’s an angle on start-up and sales culture that I haven’t seen before, so that freshness was also entertaining. And it’s an undoubtably well-written book.
Darren isn’t always an easy character to root for, or even like, but he has a good heart. That doesn’t get entirely lost, even when he’s up to his neck in Sumwun’s bullshit.
The book is intelligent, fast-paced and slickly written. If you enjoyed Wolf of Wall Street or The Other Black Girl, I’d particularly recommend Black Buck.
If you’ve already read it, I’d love to know what you thought! Let me know in the comments below.
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