Book Review - Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: Black Buck
Author: Mateo Askaripour
Source: NetGalley Advanced Reader Copy
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Format: E book
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Synopsis

There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.

An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.

After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.

Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.

Review

"An opportunity means change. An opportunity means action. But most of all , an opportunity means a chance of failure."

I received this book from NetGalley in September and when I started reading it then somehow I found it difficult to get into. 

Last weekend while at the hairdresser to pick up this again and I just could not put it down. 

This is a very well written story about a twenty two year old young man named Darren. A Starbucks employee, who in giving a good sales pitch while selling a  coffee to Rhett Daniels CEO from Sumwun, a tech startup company located in New York, was given a life changing opportunity to work for a dream company. Little did Daniel know that this opportunity would change his life as he knew it forever.

Askaripour skillfully crafted this story, in that it provided not only entertainment but it gave a lot of life long lessons and really made the reader think about life in a deep way especially as it relates to success. Each character had an important role in the book which was awesome. 

It is also important to note Darren's change of attitude when he became successful. These changes reflect the attitude of so many young people upon getting into profitable employment at an early age. The writer brought into the story the issue of race relations and issues  beautifully. I liked how he was not one sided in the approach to the discourse on race.

Love the characters, Love the book. Well done!!!