Every so often, I play a game at the bookstore in which I pick up a book based solely on the cover and title. It's a deliberate game; I head to the store with the game in mind, and I usually spend thirty to forty minutes perusing the shelves, picking four or five books, then sitting somewhere and deciding which to pick.
On this day, though, I didn't even make through the A's before finding the book I knew I would by. Entitlement was front facing (I am an unabashed sucker for this plain and obvious marketing trick). It's strange light play, the orange sky popping out from the dark room and dark skyscrapers in the distance drew me to it, and when I read the blurbs on the back cover--from Louise Erdrich, a living legend; Danzy Senna, who's book, Color Television, I had just read; AND Kiley Reid, who was a new discovery for me las, and a new favourite, last year--I didn't even bother going on to the B's.
As is nearly always the case with spur of the moment picks, the book surprised me. A brief literary novel that hits harder than it should be able.
Brooke, a young and ambitious black woman, has been hired by an eighty-year-old billionaire. He claims he wishes to give away his billions before he dies, to change the world—with millions of oysters dropped in rivers to clean them; donations to hospitals, libraries, etc—or at least alleviate some of the guilt he feels having accrued so much in his lifetime. He’s hired a team of people to find individuals and organizations that are worth giving money to, and Brooke comes in at the bottom of the team’s hierarchy.
In their first meeting, however, Brooke catches Mr Ashee Jaffee’s attention, and he takes her under his wing as what he calls his protégé. He takes her on private dinner meetings, walks for coffee, and is generally enthralled with her passion and zest for life, and for her eagerness to start on their collective project. He promises her a lot of power, having access to his money and time, and she starts off believing she’s going to help him make a big difference in the world.
One can tell almost instantly that Rumaan Alam is a seasoned storyteller. While the novel is definitely driven by Brooke and Asher and their relationship, there are quite a few characters, and Alam is unafraid of ‘head-hopping,’ a technique so often jarring and confusing which many readers poo-poo. The narrator is stuck in Brooke’s perspective for the large majority of the novel, but when it needs to, it jumps into Asher’s perspective, or maybe Asher’s long-serving secretary’s, or even Brooke’s own mother’s, whom she is so desperate to impress. Alam has mastered this technique, to the point that it's subtleness and surety are so tight that the reader barely notices it is getting a glimpse into several characters' psyches at once.
On the surface, the novel seems pretty straightforward: A young and ambitious woman sets off to save the world with a billionaire’s money, but the more she sees what this money can do—penthouse suites; $300 lunches; a business account with seemingly unlimited funds; 18 years of home care for one of Ashee’s beloved employee’s mother—the more she hopes his money might not only change the world, but change her own life.
When she finds it is harder to convince the billionaire to part with his money for noble causes than it first seemed, she shifts into concocting a plan that would make him give some of it—she wants to buy an apartment in New York—to her, so that she might continue his legacy after he’s all said and done.
The novel is, at times, funny and endearing, but it takes a hard look at what it means to have money, what it means to be in the vicinity of someone who has a LOT of money. Everyone in Jaffee’s orbit seems to believe they are going to make a difference, but as the novel progresses, one finds that having money, or giving it away, convincing someone with too much of it to give it away, even being asked to give someone else’s money away, is harder than it might seem.
Jaffee balks at giving it to “unworthy” organizations, and eventually agrees to let his wife keep a quarter of his fortune. Even when Brooke does find an organization—a small school for disadvantaged youth run by one woman and a collection of volunteers—the woman in charge doesn’t want it, skeptical of what will be expected of her after taking the “gift.” And while Brooke spends much of the novel trying to convince the woman to take the money—believing it would be an exorbitant total, enough to build a new building, hire teachers and offer salaries—when the school does finally agree to accept, Jaffee caps the donation at $10,000, saying he’s not interested in something as small an meaningless as a school run by volunteers. His legacy should be bigger than that.
We follow the characters, mainly Brooke but many characters, as their ideas of changing the world shift from the “greater good,” to ideas of changing their own lives, setting themselves up for a safe and comfortable future.
The novel asks the essential question of whether people can actually choose to do “good” with their money, or are we, as humans, destined to succumb to the luxuries money can afford us when it’s right there in front of us. So often we, on social media or wherever else, ask why billionaires won’t solve world hunger or stop wars or provide housing for those without it, and Entitlement shows, in the specificity of one billionaire and one woman who has struggled to keep afloat for most of her life, that the answers to these questions seem to be simple: parting with money once you have it, or are close to it, is harder than we think.
Plot/Pacing = .75/1 Character/Voice = .75/1 Engagement = 1/1 Length/Resolution = .75/1 My Gut Feeling = .75/1
Total Rating = 4/5 Stars
