‘Leave the World Behind’ (basis of the Julia Roberts film) author returns with ‘Entitlement’

At the beginning of Rumaan Alam’s last novel, the 2020 bestseller and National Book Award finalist “Leave the World Behind,” a married couple and their two children set out from Brooklyn to a luxury house at the end of Long Island to begin a family vacation. On the way, they pass towns that are home to either blue-collar or middle-class inhabitants.

“The actual rich,” Alam wrote, “lived in some other realm, like Narnia.”

In the author’s latest novel (which also references illusory Narnia), a young Black woman visits the realm of the actual rich — in fact the ultra-rich. She quickly finds that it isn’t an off-limits fantasy land but rather a world that she could, and indeed should, gain access to. In our new Gilded Age, marked by rising living costs and widening wealth gaps, “Entitlement” is a timely work, as well as a shrewd and absorbing one.

Brooke Orr is a 33-year-old New Yorker who is trying to restart her career and rediscover meaning in her life after wasting nine years in an unfulfilling teaching job at a Bronx charter school. She takes a position as a program coordinator at a foundation established by Asher Jaffee, a white billionaire 50 years her senior who is on a mission to give away his fortune and “save souls.”

Asher takes a shine to Brooke, his protégée, and as they spend time together he solicits her opinions and values her judgments while she marvels at the power and possibilities that money can buy.

For a time, Brooke’s days are eventful. She socializes with her “almost cousin” Kim and their best friend Matthew; she persuades the wary director of a dance school for children to accept a hefty charitable donation from Asher; and she argues with her mother, who is skeptical about the octogenarian philanthropist, thinking his largesse is just an elaborate scam.

But when Asher buys Brooke lunch and tells her, “There are things to which you’re entitled,” she realizes there is a gulf between what she has and what she deserves. Entranced by Asher’s privilege, she becomes recklessly and obsessively ambitious. Can she stop herself from spiraling out of control?

Alam’s fourth novel lacks the sense of dread that suffused his previous offering and is occasionally marred by soapbox speeches. However, its abundant strengths render it not only a deft examination of the seductive and corrosive allure of money but also a compelling character study of an individual driven by want, not need.

Brooke proves a captivating presence as she goes on extravagant shopping sprees, prioritizes selfhood over sisterhood and has dalliances with strangers and falling-outs with loved ones. Her rash decisions stack up and the mounting tension reaches a climax in the unsettling last act. We know we have witnessed an expert novelist at work — for we can still feel the shock waves from that final scene long after closing the book.

Malcolm Forbes, who has written for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Entitlement

By: Rumaan Alam.

Publisher: Riverhead, 276 pages, $30.