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 .