In May, writer Rumaan Alam launched his new book at Tony Christie’s auction house and showroom in New York. Guests wandered through the exhibits with flutes of champagne in hand, pondering the commercial value of art, squinting at price tags higher than at least one visitor’s annual salary.
And after the attendees got home, they took off their heels and evening clothes and dived into their copies Right (out Sept. 17 from Riverhead Books), the party setting made even more sense.
The book, reviewed in this week’s print edition of PEOPLE, follows a young woman named Brooke as she searches for her place in the world. When he takes a job working for billionaire Asher Jaffee, he finds more than work. It raises questions of race and privilege, generosity and greed, philanthropy and who deserves it – or doesn’t.
Read the exclusive excerpt below.
For the PEOPLE review Rightpick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday or subscribe here.
‘Entitlement’ by Rumaan Alam.
Riverhead books
In his 1998 memoir, Asher Jaffee claims that the heyday of working 24 hours a day meant more to him than the product of that work, millions. He wrote that it is a kind of addiction; he wrote that it was a rush; he wrote that it destroyed his marriage. This wasn’t true (Barbara loved money), but it sounded like wisdom. In any case, anyone who has read business memoirs did not consider this a cautionary tale. They recognized each other. They also claimed that it was a high goal. lie! It was money. Of course it was. No one at the Foundation (not even Natalie) has read Asher Jaffee’s memoir. Asher was still looking for booze.
But he made concessions, like a four-day work week (Carol loved him more than money). So he was mostly housebound in Connecticut almost half the time. Sometimes, a little thing, as Carol called these evenings of shrimp cocktail, bubbly, and conversation, but mostly there were only three hounds—Asher collectively called them Cerberus—for company. Weather permitting, but even with the occasional, rejuvenating rain, in jackets and hunting jackets like English gentlemen, Asher and Carol would trot the grounds with a trio of dogs who were crazy for every deer or rabbit.
The Sunday Times in the clutter of rattan tables in the solarium, husband and wife read in the silence that could be maintained in such a long marriage. They’d put on a spy thriller or one of Carol’s weepers, and Marina would make kale chips, popcorn, and freshly squeezed juice cakes. They diverted, poking around a bookstore, eating crumbly cookies at Starbucks, touring a museum they’d helped open that Asher and Carol Jaffee hoped would one day leave them their Warhol Liz.
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Every now and then, Asher would swallow a powerful pill, a miracle the size of a peppercorn, give it 30 minutes, and they would lie together, overwhelmed by the fantasy of being young again. He enjoyed all this screwing around, he enjoyed screwing up, but privately Asher dreaded these weekends, which always had that noncommittal mood that, from his school days, he associated with Sundays.
The office was the place where things happened, the place where he was needed, the place of his every victory. The foundation’s grimy quarters looked nothing like the home of the long-gone Jaffee Corporation: 16 floors — half the place! — tower in Midtown: smoked glass, shiny chrome with a touch of grandeur. That was the point. While the glamor of the old headquarters confirmed that company’s ambition, the shabbyness of this current office suggested virtue. It smelled like pear-tinged shampoo, perfume over sweat, an intoxicating bouquet of women’s bodies.
Even that bad lighting made him able to focus. His attitude toward office employees was quite different from what governed interactions with his domestic staff. In the office he could wander, tell stories, ask questions. He could expect busy women to reveal their weekend plans, restaurant reviews, updates on their spouses, their various wonderful adventures in the world. Asher was spoiled and he hated that about himself. Too rich, too old. He missed the friction of real life. How he valued his ladies! No one more than Natalie, because of the care she devoted, organizing each day as she knew he liked it: ready coffee with milk, mysteriously always hot as if Natalie could outwit the laws of physics, and a series of calls, meetings, meals, errands.
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He was most pleased when she told him he was needed. What would he do without her, more loyal than any of his three dogs? It was one of the issues of his age that was best ignored. They never discussed her retirement (that word, ugh). Just then, he could feel her drifting off, a soothing presence, making the conference call he was only half paying attention to bearable.
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By Rumaan Alam.
David A. Land; Riverhead Books
Then, another voice. “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I could have five minutes?” Natalie’s standard response: “I’m so sorry, Brooke, I don’t have Mr. Jaffee this morning.” Have it. Cut it in half, put both Ashers to work. If only. Asher was touched by the way she protected him. He shouted, disobedient. “What are you talking about? I’m here!” “MR. Jaffee, you’re coming to the Ford Foundation in 20 minutes.” Natalie knew how to be strict when she needed to be. She hovered at the door, finger outstretched, like a witch, like a mom. “Christopher is downstairs.”
“I’m done, gentlemen.” He cut off the call – something about the real estate parcels that Jaffee Corp. still holds throughout the country – no goodbye to lawyers and mediators. He paid them; he didn’t have to be nice to those people. “It can wait. They can wait. Brooke, come in, come in.” Natalie moved aside. “Sit.” He placed his hands on the edge of the table and turned back to his designated listening position. The office was nothing special – an old desk instead of a desk, a chair on wheels, a Barcelona lounge, a few bentwood chairs – but there was a massive Philip Guston oil on the wall behind it. The thing was, Asher’s confidence was centered entirely on his person. The room he worked in had nothing to do with anything.
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“If you’re going on a date…” Brooke was determined not to get upset. “Always a meeting.” Asher valued his reputation as a leader – fearless but approachable. “What can I do?” A ramrod posture and a determined look.
“There’s something I’d like to talk about, it won’t be long.” “The nice thing about being me is that I’m the most important part of the meetings I attend. Unless he’s in the Oval Office. I’ve been there several times. You really aren’t an important person in that room, or I wasn’t. But the Ford Foundation? I may be late.” He was bragging. He hoped to impress. The reason he went to the Ford Foundation rather than have them send emissaries; this office would not be so admired.
She took out an envelope from her pocket. “I was wondering if you sent me this.” It wasn’t what she had practiced saying, knowing that he had sent it to her. Smile. “Yes, of course. You see my name there.” The woman was a stoic! “I wondered why my employer would send me a check that wasn’t my paycheck.” She chose this language, this difference. She could accept the boss’s money as a salary, but not a gift, like from some kind uncle. “Your employer didn’t send it. Your employer is the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation.”
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He came up with this. “That check is from me. Personally.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
This seemed a noncommittal way of forcing him to explain. What did he mean by that? “Think of it as paid debt, if you will.” Did he offend her? He thought the opposite. It was an offer to her – was the word love?
“I never took you to lunch.”
“I’m not sure what to say. But you took me to lunch.”
It was no longer clear to Brooke what principle he stood for. “There is nothing to say! It’s a gesture. Enjoy it. Surrender to me.”
“It doesn’t seem – ethical.” She placed the envelope on his desk.
“Come on now.” Young people today seemed determined to take offense. They liked it. They harbored their own anger. “This is my way of saying—it’s an apology, if you prefer to think so.” “
There is no need.” These were reflexive good manners that had been instilled in her. Brooke almost felt sorry for the man. He understood money more than people.
By ENTITLEMENT Rumaan Alam. Published by arrangement with Riverhead, a member of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Rumaan Alam, 2024.
Right Rumaan Alam is out on September 17 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.
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