Private Equity: A Memoir

Sun debuts with a thought-provoking if undercooked account of her time working as an overqualified assistant for the founder of a Manhattan hedge fund. At 29, after four years as a highly paid financial analyst, Sun wanted to make a career switch—the more she earned, the more she “recoil[ed] from it all.” Hoping to lean into her artistic impulses, she decided to obtain a graduate degree in creative writing. To support that pursuit while pivoting away from financial analysis, she searched for a job that would help her pay for school. Ultimately, she landed a position assisting “Boone Prescott,” billionaire founder of the hedge fund “Carbon” (Sun changed the names of most of the people and companies she discusses). She wrote Boone’s speeches, prepared his PowerPoint slides, and ordered his car services; all the while, he dodged the press and maintained an unusual level of secrecy at the firm. As Boone hit Sun with more and more work, attempting to buy her loyalty with bonuses, raises, and lavish perks, she grew increasingly weary of his demands and the company’s faux-familial culture. Eventually, she left the firm despite Boone’s protests. Sun tugs at intriguing ideas—including an assertion that her emotionally repressed childhood “made me the perfect handmaiden for financial capitalism”—but the book’s momentum drags in places. Still, it’s an intriguing portrait of millennial burnout. Agent: Melissa Flashman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)