In 2014, thirty-three-year-old Brooke Orr, a former school teacher and the adopted Black daughter of Maggie, a single, middle-aged white woman, is starting her first day at work for the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation, a small group which is seeking to give millions to worthy causes, as its aging founder, Asher, a famed, eighty-three-year-old billionaire businessman – his daughter, Linda, died while working at the World Trade Center on 9/11 – wants to do good with his fortune in the December of his days.
Also at the foundation is executive director Sandra; consultant Jody; eager office assistant Kate; and Natalie, Asher’s middle-aged, devoted, long-time secretary. Brooke’s first assignment is to research monies needed to repatriate the oyster to New York Harbor. She soon meets Asher, newly returned from vacationing with his second wife, Carol. Asher takes an avid interest in Brooke, bringing her to lunch at a modest diner, and Brooke is moved by his sincerity. He selflessly wants to make great change for the good of society with his money. He urges her to find a worthy cause of her own for his foundation.
At the same time, Brooke is irked by her white, thirty-year-old adopted brother Alex, who’s marrying Rachel, a Persian Jew, in a ceremony which will largely be paid for by Maggie. Though Brooke has no plans to ever marry, she feels she’s deserving of the equivalent monies.
With her longtime Black friends, including wealthy Kim, and gay, lovelorn Matthew, Brooke is struck by Kim’s decision to buy her own apartment, which seems to Brooke the logical next step for herself in her life. She currently pays a modest monthly rent in a condo owned by her mother’s longtime friend, Randi, who decamped to Chicago years ago. Brooke also contends with the usual city difficulties, such as the growing homeless population on the street, and lately, The Subway Sicko, a man who’s pin-pricking people on the subway and has yet to be caught. Later, Brooke receives a lunch reimbursement from Asher for far more then she’d spent at the diner, and when she tries to return it, Asher insists that she regard herself as deserving of more in life, and to get what she’s owed.
She next accompanies Asher to a meeting with the Ford Foundation, which wants to assume control of his fortune for their worthy causes, but Brooke, as she tells Asher, thinks they’re threatened by his potential impact in the philanthropical world. Asher agrees, refusing involvement with them.
By now a true believer in Asher, and having succeeded in ferrying a million dollars to the oyster repatriation, Brooke at last finds her own cause for Asher to fund, The Throop Community School, a small community Black school in a church basement run by Sister Ghalyela Jefferson, who balks when Asher offers Asher’s millions for the school. Money, she notes, always comes with strings. Yet Brooke is persistent, finally convincing the Sister and her mother, Sister Michaela, that the money from the Foundation, potentially totaling in the millions, could be used to expand the school’s real estate holdings, enabling their work to broaden and help more children.
Coming to know Natalie better, Brooke learns of Asher’s generosity, as when he came to Natalie’s aid when her ailing mother needed help. Asher paid for her to be looked after in a lavish care facility. Brooke is further dazzled when Asher takes her to Christie’s where he purchases a valuable painting for his wife’s upcoming birthday, and listens spellbound as he further explains how those who are deserving can easily come into their own and do good altruistically.
Later, after kicking an irksome barking dog while buying a bagel, she meets with real estate broker, Hillary, who’s pleased to show Brooke a number of apartments in the city. Brooke has decided she’s in the market and looking to buy, and though she doesn’t have the money to make such a purchase, she knows she’s deserving. She swiftly plagiarizes a letter from the Foundation, exaggerating her import and salary, as part of preapproved loan application at a bank. Moreover, she and Hilary finally find the apartment she wants to buy on 19th street. Happily, the sellers accept her offer.
Later, when Asher magnanimously shows Brooke the lavish apartment where he and Carol live, she pitches the Throop Community School to him, asking him to come see a dance and art presentation the children are giving and to meet the Sisters. Next extolling Asher’s virtues to Alex, she’s insulted when he reminds her that he’s not a saint. But to Brooke, he’s a man who’s accepted the billions which have deservedly come his way, unlike the city’s poor, who are a distraction.
Stunned to be pricked on the subway by the Subway Sicko, then realizing that she imagined it, Brooke feels more alive and sure of herself then she ever has before, and is driven to realize her deserved potential of owning her apartment and securing untold riches. For his part, Matthew is nervous when Brooke lies to Asher’s building doorman in order to gain entry to Asher’s and Carol’s lavish apartment for him to see while the couple are away. Later invited to join Asher as his companion at a Mozart performance at Lincoln Center, she’s moved when he tears up, as the music stirs thoughts of his mortality, and when he places his hand on her knee. He also tells her that he wants her to be his protege, and to continue his work at the Foundation after he’s gone.
At the Throop Community School, Asher, with Brooke at his side, sees the kids’ art and performance and meets the Sisters. Soon after, Brooke argues heatedly, then hangs up, on a banking executive who explains that the bank will not be able to loan her the money for the apartment. Moreover, she’s stunned when Asher notes, in passing, that he’ll be happy to give ten thousand to Throop Community School. She can’t fathom why the oysters, in comparison, were worth a million. In addition, she sees another side to Asher. The Foundation’s work is not merely altruistic, which includes a record-setting donation to community colleges, but a means toward earning Asher the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama.
Attending Asher’s lavish birthday party for Carol at his and Carol’s country estate, along with all ther Foundation workers and the city’s moneyed and political elite, Brooke is unsurprised to be regarded as a caterer by Carol, despite having met her at the Foundation once before. But Brooke is undaunted in terms of getting what she wants. After taking a bath in Asher’s and Carol’s primary bedroom ensuite, she’s all but nude when Asher walks into the bedroom – stunned to see her there.
But Brooke casually states that she’s perfectly willing to give Asher what he wants to get what she wants and rightly deserves: an apartment and security. After all, she’s his protégé, his second daughter, she insists, and should he like, she’d also be happy to carry his child so that he at last has a proper heir. Asher is outraged, noting that he’d been warned by Natalie – she’d found out about Brooke’s forged Foundation letter – and orders her out of his house and his life for good. Blithely unconcerned and certain she’ll receive what she deserves in life, Brooke departs, unsure whether she’ll return to the city or not.
A disturbing, serpentine drama that sneaks up on you, Entitlement charts the exploits of Brooke, a Black, former teacher who’s hired to work for a philanthropical group headed by Asher, an aging billionaire who takes her under his wing. Yet all is not as it seems, especially in terms of Brooke. Her growing infatuation with Asher’s riches, lifestyle and fame, and what they might do for her, are at first seeming flights of fancy, but in the pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you finale, we at last realize how far she’s prepared to go to get what she wants. It’s not that you don’t see it coming. Like Blue Jasmine, this novel presents denial and delusion with furtive suspense and unsettling plausibility.
Specialty feature prospects are possible for this small-scaled drama with two plumb leading roles, Brooke and Asher, along with its on-trend examinations of income inequality, the later which is arguably superficial window dressing for an otherwise bracing character study. Mass-market break-out prospects are also possible, particularly with stellar execution and awards circuit notices.
There’s specificity to all of the characters here, which includes Brooke’s unconventional upbringing, yet this works toward making their plights both uncommon and universal. The tipping point for Brooke – or the exact point where she moves from standard admiration and awe to grievous self-deception – is not dramatized. This may well be deliberate, but it’s perhaps a misstep. Arguably, the more we’re fully engaged with her inner metamorphosis, the better.
For his part, Asher is caught up in his own delusion. An aging billionaire, he’s seemingly ready to give his fortune away to worthy causes merely for the good that it will do, only for his motivations to be unveiled as craven status-seeking. The supporting characters are sharply realized, particularly Natalie, Asher’s long-time assistant, who’s dreamily beholden to him and ready to attack should anyone threaten him; and Matthew, Brooke’s best friend, and the only character who seems to balk when Brooke bluntly announces how she wants to proceed with her life, and why she believes she’s deserving of so much.
Asher may be the obvious embodiment of the novel’s title, but it applies to every character here, since each are caught up in their own fantasy of what they insist life owes them.