Reviews with content warning for Torture - Black Buck

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Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

38 reviews

paolina's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The thing about satire is that it exaggerates the truth, to show us how ridiculous the reality is. The success of Black Buck as a satire is due to it not being all that far off from the truth. I found the book to be incredibly engaging, and I couldn't look away when the plot events started to go really south. I look forward to what Askaripour comes out with next.

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cavernism's review against another edition

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dark funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

It felt bizarre to read this book that's published in 2021, because it feels like it was written 5 years ago and so a lot of the details feel out of date - like the start-up company's "crazy" idea is basically BetterHelp/online therapy - not exactly groundbreaking or new. The "amazing" salary Darren is offered is $40,000 a year plus a bonus. I live in the Midwest and 40k is not a big salary...I can't imagine it would cover costs in New York City.

I'm pretty okay with things in satire being exaggerated/over-the-top - that's the point. I'm not okay with setting up promises to the reader - "This character is going to put these other character in situations where they'll have to use sales techniques" and then ignore them - "the characters will actually just panic and run away." This situation happens twice in the space of a few pages.

And then, there's the Supportive Girlfriend. Her characterization is basically being curvaceous and going to nursing school and supporting her boyfriend. I'm over it.

There were things I enjoyed - I definitely wasn't sure where the plot was going to go so that made it at a fast read, but overall it ended up being a frustrating read, and the fact that the marketing compared this book to the movie Sorry to Bother You made this feel even weaker, because Sorry to Bother You is a much more inventive, strange, and memorable story about race and capitalism.

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kayleyhyde's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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carolinebrooks's review against another edition

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dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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araeofbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“I realized it was freedom that had motivated me from the very beginning. Not money, power, the need to prove myself, or even to make Ma proud, but the freedom to breathe where I want, when I want, how I want, and with whom I want in my beautiful brown skin.”

I finished this book a few days ago and honestly, I’m still thinking about and processing this book. It’s fiction, but it’s written as part memoir of our protagonist Darren and part self-help/sales how-to. I’ve never read anything quite like it. Darren is kind of stuck in his life. At 22, he forewent college and is working at Starbucks. He engages with the CEO of a tech start-up in the coffee shop, accidentally getting himself an opportunity as a saleman in this vague new company. The first part of this book felt to me like a satire about majority white, fraternity bro start-up culture. Darren is the only person of color in this workspace and there’s this running motif in which Darren’s new colleagues are constantly telling him he looks like a famous Black person and never the same famous Black person (he gets everything from Malcom X to Morgan Freeman). We see Darren get sucked into the cult-like mentality of this tech start-up.

This part of the book was really engrossing and uncomfortable (in a good way!) as a white reader. There are so many things I don’t necessarily think about the spaces I exist in, because I am very often in the majority, that this book really made me think long and hard about. That’s what I want in most of the books I read.

There was a dramatic turn in this book where it becomes something else -- still what I felt like was a satire about race and the way we talk about and view it, but at the beginning of this turn even our narrator Darren admits that the turn is “half absurd, half jaw-dropping, and a whole heaping of crazy.” I don’t know what I feel about this half of the book. It definitely felt absurd, but I appreciated that the narrator is like, yes, you are not crazy for feeling this way. This is intentional. This book was darkly funny, engrossing, and cringe-worthy, and I’m excited to see what Mateo Askaripour writes next.

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