Entitlement

July 8, 2024
Alam (Leave the World Behind) delivers an unsettling novel about a 30-something middle-class Black New Yorker unmoored by her billionaire boss’s wealth and power. After spending nine years teaching at a Bronx charter school, Brooke Orr hopes to fulfill her passion for arts education by taking an administrative job at a foundation set up by businessman Asher Jaffee, 83, to disperse his fortune. Brooke impresses Asher with her dedication, and he tasks her with finding a group to fund, prompting Brooke to convince the skeptical director of a Brooklyn children’s dance company to accept an award in the event that Asher deems the company worthy of a grant. The more Brooke puts into her job, the less connected she is to her old life, to the point that she feels nothing after hearing a close family friend has died in a car accident. As Brooke spends more time with Asher, she becomes convinced she’s “entitled” to her own “place in the world,” a reasonable belief that grows warped as she fixates on the Manhattan apartment she’s trying to buy but can’t afford. As she progresses on her quest to get what she deserves, the slow-burn narrative builds to a strange and provocative crisis point. Readers will want to stick around for Brooke’s reckoning. Agent: Julie Barer, Book Group.

Starred review from July 15, 2024
A billionaire philanthropist's ambitious young prot�g� wants her slice of the pie. Whereas Alam's previous book, Leave the World Behind (2020)--a National Book Award finalist and the basis for a Netflix film--focused on cataclysmic external threats, his new novel explores a threat from within: ambition. Or maybe that's not quite right, because the blinding ambition of Alam's protagonist, Brooke Orr, a Vassar-educated Black woman raised in New York City by a mission-driven white mother, is shaped by the world in which she finds herself and is propelled by its inequities. After years in an unrewarding teaching job at a Bronx charter school, Brooke, 33, takes a job as a program coordinator at 83-year-old white billionaire Asher Jaffee's charitable foundation and is embraced as his prot�g�. But once Brooke has been welcomed into Asher's place of privilege, she believes she is entitled to all it can provide: the designer clothes, the fancy meals, a space to call her own, and, more than anything, the power to change lives, to save souls. As Brooke makes increasingly ill-advised decisions, the tension slowly and compellingly builds toward a dizzying conclusion that feels both surprising and inevitable. Here, as always, Alam's facility for vividly setting a scene or finding just the right detail or metaphor, his ability to journey inside the minds and emotions of a range of people, and his willingness to unflinchingly and insightfully address issues of race, class, gender, and age are on full display. An exploration of the ways that access or proximity to money can dramatically shift perspective and skew purpose, identity, and behavior, the novel considers a question central to today's America: If money equals freedom, what does that mean for people who don't have it? Cements Alam's status as a talented truth-teller willing to tackle tough issues with grace, generosity, and sensitivity.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from August 1, 2024
Thirtysomething Brooke Orr is hoping for a career reboot as program coordinator for the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation. A billionaire many times over, Asher wants to give away his money before he dies and Brooke's job is to help find causes worthy of financial support. Brooke decides that a local New York City children's art nonprofit is deserving of charity, even if its Black owner remains unconvinced. When her best friend and younger brother begin to settle into comfortable lives, Brooke wonders: Can Asher Jaffee rescue her too, while he's at it? After all, as one character questions, "what we were taught--get a job, work hard, save, be prudent, buy a little place of your own, contribute to the goddamn economy, do the thing that makes the world go round--is that even possible for us?" Alam follows his best-selling Leave the World Behind (2021) with this visceral and absolutely mesmerizing novel of power plays and capitalism. He gives a shout-out to Sylvia Plath, who once said, "How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to."" Brooke, however, doesn't quite buy that argument. She knows we can find security through other paths, even if we risk flying too close to the sun.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 13, 2024

Leaving an unsatisfying job as a teacher, Brooke Orr lands on her feet at the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation. Asher, a white, 83-year-old billionaire, is trying to give his life meaning by divesting his fortune in good works to honor the daughter he lost in 9/11. He views Brooke as a confident, young Black woman who's unafraid to speak up. As his prot�g�, Brooke is invited along to meetings with the rich and richer. She is also expected to find worthy causes and believes she has found one in a progressive but run-down school for the arts, but its director has no interest in her largesse. As Brooke's proximity to wealth and privilege grows, so does her sense of entitlement. Soon she alienates her family and oldest friends and tries to buy an apartment with money she doesn't have. VERDICT As readers saw in Alam's previous novel, Leave the World Behind, there is a palpable sense of dread running through this highly recommended book as well. In this case, it is not an existential threat to humanity; it's the train wreck that is Brooke's life. Readers may see it coming, but they won't be able to look away.--Barbara Love

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.