In Rumaan Alam’s new novel, the reader is introduced to Brooke Orr, a 33-year-old who hasn’t quite made it but now sees her chance. She has grown up in Manhattan, the black adopted daughter of the fiercely feminist Maggie (who’s white), and she has lived both inside and outside of privilege. She has studied at Vassar College; she’s also used to being the only black face in a room.
Now she works for Asher Jaffee, a billionaire who made his fortune in stationery. His daughter worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm, and was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. This taught Jaffee – sort of – that said fortune is personally meaningless, and now he’s determined to give it all away. But proximity to wealth makes Brooke desire it for herself; in cosying up to Jaffee, she begins to wonder whether she might benefit. So the plot is set in motion.
Alam is best known for his 2020 novel Leave the World Behind, a finalist for the Orwell Prize, and made into a not-quite-satisfying film starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali. Like that novel, which considered the lives of a wealthy family as they’re engulfed by a mysterious global catastrophe, Entitlement questions – oh yes, entitlement. The set-up places Brooke, over and over again, in situations where she must ask herself: what does a great fortune mean, and how does it affect those who have it?
There are satisfactions in this novel: for instance, Alam creates a nicely atmospheric New York City. But its moral frame overwhelms its characters. Brooke’s aunt Paige, whom we never meet, is killed in an accident; this is merely a set up for Brooke to forego attending her funeral in favour of a work commitment, so we see clearly how Money Corrupts All It Touches. Jaffee, the quintessential old rich man, finds Brooke a “baffling girl”: the trouble is, so do we. Alam’s protagonist is a pawn of her author; nothing about her, or any of the useful characters in this book, startles or moves.
Fiction’s strength is when it demonstrates change. Consider Pip’s transformation and redemption in Great Expectations, or Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s recent interrogation of how wealth does and doesn’t insulate its possessors in her new novel, Long Island Compromise. Unfortunately, Alam’s Entitlement merely lectures; the reader is entitled to more.
Entitlement is published by Bloomsbury at £16.99. To order your copy for £14.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
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