A darkly comic tale of an affluent and delusional young man who terrorizes his way through New York City's elite in the 1990s, from the acclaimed author of Tante Eva
Robert Doughten Savile is a young man from Darien, Connecticut, an affluent suburb of New York City. The Stalker follows Doughty, as he's known, through his adolescence and young adulthood, starting in posh Darien, into his brief time in college, and his inevitable landing in New York City in the early 1990s.
From a family that was once wealthy and no longer is, Doughty has a sense of entitlement that is particular to that part of the world-the world that Gatsby tried to infiltrate, the world of old New York money, the world that to this day thinks of itself as golden.
Like any façade of wealthy communities, it is just that-a facade. Rife with anti-Semitism, vicious classism, and the belief built on keeping those that don't belong in their place- even amongst themselves if not even more among themselves-it doesn't take much to rip that façade to shreds. But Doughty clings to his good name and his privilege like a man clinging to a sinking ship, the entire time thinking, "THIS IS MY SHIP."
As we live inside the mind of Doughty and watch his demise, The Stalker tells the tale of sociopathy as the norm. At times ridiculously funny, the levity is there to make the horror palatable. It's the story of everyday predators, addiction, sexual power and desire, and the relationship between self-delusion and the pathology of lying that leads to more lies and then the belief in those lies.
