The Stalker - by Paula Bomer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Robert Doughten Savile, aka "Doughty," is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud of delusion, convinced of his own genius and certain that the wealth and high status that he believes to be his birthright are just around the corner. While he has little capacity to accurately assess his own abilities or prospects, he cruises through life on the sheer force of his own sense of entitlement, dropping out of college and landing in the early '90s in New York City, a place brimming with both prosperity and desperation. He cons his way from a bed at the YMCA into the posh Soho loft of a middle-aged book editor, while pursuing a young bartender, whom he also abuses and gaslights. He spins elaborate tales about his imaginary high-power job in real estate while, in reality, he passes his days watching George Carlin specials on VHS, smoking crack in Tompkins Square Park, and engaging in occasional sex work in the restrooms of Grand Central Station. His many failures, however, only serve to sharpen his one true gift: Doughty is a skilled predator, and the damage he inflicts on the women around him is real and remorseless. Fans of true crime podcasts about con men like Dirty John and Who the Hell Is Hamish? will revel in this novel and its portrait of the sociopath as a young loser. As shocking as it is illuminating, The Stalker confirms Paula Bomer as a contemporary master of the pitch-black comic novel"--

Book Synopsis

An Untalented Mr. Ripley, a Dumb American Psycho: A young man combines boundless self-confidence with perpetual failure and ineptitude as he tries to manipulate his way into a better life, preying on women in New York City in the early '90s.

Robert Doughten Savile, aka "Doughty," is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud of delusion, convinced of his own genius and status. While he has little capacity to accurately assess his own abilities or prospects, he cruises through life on the sheer force of his own sense of entitlement, dropping out of college and landing in the early '90s in New York City, a place brimming with both prosperity and desperation.

He cons his way from a bed at the YMCA into the posh Soho loft of a middle-aged book editor, while pursuing a young bartender, whom he also abuses and gaslights. He spins elaborate tales about his imaginary high-power job in real estate while, in reality, he passes his days watching comedy specials on VHS, smoking crack in Tompkins Square Park, and engaging in occasional sex work in the restrooms of Grand Central Station. His many failures, however, only serve to sharpen his one true gift: Doughty is a skilled predator, and the damage he inflicts on the women around him is real and remorseless. As shocking as it is illuminating, The Stalker confirms Paula Bomer as a contemporary master of the pitch-black comic novel.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Stalker

Vogue's Best Books of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Editors' Pick
Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"Brilliant, disturbing, and hilarious . . . [Doughty's] deficiencies only make Bomer's perverse odyssey more compelling . . . For all the obvious comparisons to Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley or Bret Easton Ellis's Patrick Bateman, Doughty also serves as a male counterpart of Ottessa Moshfegh's narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation: a blond narcissist who stares out onto a vanished Manhattan skyline through a cloud of drugs, desperation, and delusion. The final pages, as in Moshfegh's work, will move readers with their unlikely and ultimately transcendent beauty."
--Vogue

"Shocking . . . Beautifully executed. Bomer tells the story with a third-person limited point of view, which forces readers to get uncomfortably close to Doughty, a uniquely repellent character whose obliviousness makes him grimly fascinating . . . This is, in part, a darkly funny novel, and Bomer walks a fine line brilliantly -- the moments of humor don't detract from the seriousness of the themes."
--NPR.org

"Doughty, as Robert Doughten Savile is known, is a cold-blooded sociopath who especially enjoys torturing and taking advantage of vulnerable women. Sounds like it wouldn't be fun to be stuck in his head for the duration of a novel? Well, it somehow is, thanks to Bomer's narrative minimalism, eye for detail, and uniquely twisted ability to find humor in the darkest places . . . [Doughty's] comeuppance is cathartic, glorious, and almost too viscerally disturbing to read. But read it you must."
--The Cut

"A dark comic thrill . . . The details in Brooklyn author Paula Bomer's third novel land with unusual eeriness."
--Vulture, "8 New Books You Should Read This May"

"The most unlikeable protagonist in recent memory. I read this book as a 'fuck you' to every guy who looks up to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. The Stalker is haunting, extremely unpleasant, and one of my favorites of the year."
--Anthony Jeselnik

"An endurance exercise in queasy fascination . . . Singular voice, tight sentences, vivid, stripped-down imagery . . . Genius."
--Southwest Review

"Few writers working today can get inside the heads of desperate, frustrated, or disturbed characters the way Paula Bomer can."
--Vol. 1 Brooklyn

"American Psycho leavened by an element of dark comedy . . . Doughty is an audacious character, and The Stalker is a brave, page-turning read."
--Melanie Fleishman, The Center for Fiction Bookstore

"Rendered in stylish third-person prose that keeps you oscillating between dread and morbid fascination . . . The Stalker is a blast to read. That's Bomer's genius. Her voice turns Doughty into the grotesque punchline of a very dark, very satisfying joke. Every delusion is met with a wink. Every vile act is delivered with just enough distance to make you want to scream, laugh, throw the book across the room, then immediately pick it back up."
--Language Arts

"[The Stalker] is barely enjoyable because it must be. For [Bomer] to encase her narrative in elegance and wit, or to leaven its mordant delusions with pathos or more overt comic beats, would mean to deprive it of its bite."
--The Washington Examiner

"Bomer through her dark humour peels back the layers of privilege, misogyny, and narcissism. If you're a fan of unreliable narrators, The Stalker is a must-read."
--The Indian Express

"Rarely does a book come along that rearranges perception and sings with psychological acuity. The Stalker is an impeccable character study of the least self-aware man on earth. How often do we get to see a monster from his own vantage? With Paula Bomer in charge, a stylist of the highest order, I wanted to follow him anywhere. This novel is heart-pounding, endlessly entertaining, and in complete touch with humanity. Risky and brilliant, dark as hell and bitingly comic as only the masters can pull off. Wholly satisfying to the final glorious moment."
--Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot

"In her gripping new novel The Stalker, Paula Bomer asks what it takes to survive the most destructive forms of masculinity. Ferocious and suspenseful, one part satire and two parts cautionary tale, its pages scorched my fingertips but I couldn't put it down."
--Alison B. Hart, author of The Work Wife

"Paula Bomer's The Stalker is unlike any book I have ever read. Bomer is the master of the interior monologue, taking us inside the mind of a completely unhinged, entirely reprehensible person. Even his name--Doughty--is repugnant. Bomer brings us an anti-hero so clueless while simultaneously so sure of himself that he is almost, and by this I mean almost, funny. Women, beware."
--Marcy Dermansky, author of Hot Air

"A portrait of an empty and hollow-eyed kid whose only gifts are limitless arrogance and an instinct for predation. Reading it made me feel soiled . . . The Stalker is somehow mirthless and genuinely hilarious at the same time . . . Paula Bomer stared down the barrel for this one."
--Jayson Greene, author of UnWorld

"The Stalker is an eyeball-scorching wonder, another brilliant addition to the Bomer canon. Paula Bomer shows us once again why she's one of the boldest, most intense but also most precisely observant and perversely funny novelists working today."
--Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You

"The Stalker is the kind of thrilling, demented literary fiction that will keep you reading late into the night and when you get to the end you'll want to start it all over again. Masterful."
--Bud Smith, author of Teenager

"Paula Bomer is a voice I've come back to again and again--going against the grain, unafraid of wallowing in the shadows, unflinching in her prose. The Stalker is a powerful read, a book that left me unsettled and adrift."
--Richard Thomas, finalist for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and ITW Thriller Awards

"Bomer tracks the increasingly threatening behavior of a sociopath in her excellent and shocking latest . . . As Doughty insinuates his way into the lives and homes of [two] women, the novel enters into genuinely disturbing territory. Bomer is equally adept at rendering Doughty's warped psychology as she is with injecting dark humor into the proceedings . . . This is dark and twisted fun."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Unsettling . . . A compelling character study. Bomer has created an antagonist who is a unique blend of an even more troubled Holden Caulfield mixed with a less appealing Patrick Bateman. Readers' desire for Doughty to receive karmic retribution will propel them forward through the thriller's disconcerting content."
--Booklist

Praise for Paula Bomer

"Bomer offers her characters no outs--only the creeping sense that they're doomed to swing forever between futile attempts at self-determination."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Phenomenal."
--The Atlantic

"Dark, sharp, and hilarious."
--New York Magazine

"Haunting, defiant."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Bomer's book will be talked about because she writes with such honesty about sex, but it is in matters of the soul she is most honest. These are women laid bare. Bomer dares us to look."
--The Rumpus

"I inhaled this novel. Astute. Empathetic. Unsparing. Brilliant. Bomer pushes the emotional envelope--and then shoves harder."
--Thelma Adams, author of Bittersweet Brooklyn

About the Author

Paula Bomer is the author of the novels Tante Eva and Nine Months and the story collections Inside Madeleine and Baby and Other Stories, as well as the essay collection Mystery and Mortality. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including New York Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, Fiction, and The Mississippi Review.