Private Equity
Ratings3
Average rating3.2
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.2
Named a most-anticipated book of 2024 by NPR.org, Oprah Daily, Town & Country, The Millions, Financial Times, and more. “Sun writes clearly about the demands and privileges of the job, though this isn’t a tell-all about abuses in the industry, rather a more probing inquiry into what we deem success and the values underpinning it.” —Vogue, Best Books of 2024 So Far A gripping memoir of one woman’s self-discovery inside a top Wall Street firm, and an urgent indictment of privilege, extreme wealth, and work culture When we meet Carrie Sun, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s wasting her life. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Carrie excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and climbed the corporate ladder, all in pursuit of the American dream. But at twenty-nine, she’s left her analyst job, dropped out of an MBA program, and is trapped in an unhappy engagement. So when she gets the rare opportunity to work at one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world, she knows she can’t say no. Fourteen interviews later, she’s in. Carrie is the sole assistant to the firm’s billionaire founder. She manages his work life, becoming the right hand to an investor who can move mountains and markets with a single phone call. Eager to impress, she dives headfirst into the firm’s culture, which values return on time above all else. A luxury-laden world opens up for her, and Carrie learns that money can solve nearly everything. Playing the game at the highest levels, amid the ultimate winners in our winner-take-all economy, Carrie soon finds her identity swallowed whole by work. With her physical and mental health deteriorating, she begins to rethink what it actually means to waste one’s life. A searing examination of our relationship to work, Carrie’s story illuminates the struggle for balance in a world of extremes: efficiency and excess, status and aspiration, power and fortune. Private Equity is a universal tale of self-invention from a dazzling new voice, daring to ask what we’re willing to sacrifice to get to the top—and what it might take to break free and leave it all behind.
Reviews with the most likes.
Many of my kid’s graphic novels tell the story of immigrant kids trying to navigate their parents (extremely high) expectations and try to find themselves somewhere inside of that. This is that, but for adults.
Some of Carrie’s stories about those conversations with her parents were heartbreaking, yet at the end she somehow manages to end on a redeeming note, understanding what they went through while also acknowledging how it’s shaped her.
It’s also very much a story of the perfectionist, workaholic drive some of us have, and an honest look at the repercussions. I found her ability to run with anything and do it with excellence, a success that resulted in more work combined with an inability to ask for help, especially relatable.
She shows respect for her boss while laying out the issues underneath, slowly, as she started seeing them. It’s so hard to describe this book… but we’ve been on a Miyazaki kick lately, and it makes me think of the villains-not-villains, the fluidness with which he shows the flaws in both people and systems.
If you’re the child of (Asian) immigrants, or a workaholic, or someone who works in finance, or someone who keeps putting your dreams aside, or simply someone who enjoys reading about self-discovery or memoirs in general, you will enjoy this book.
