Loner: A Novel

"Like all good writers, Teddy Wayne has an uncanny ability to teleport to another location and inhabit the people who live there. In the case of Loner, his dark and compulsively readable novel, the protagonist, David Federman –– one of those kids in high school who is known by almost no one –– unravels over the course of the narrative, and Wayne skillfully shows us every disturbing and obsessive moment. This is a close-grained look at a stalker, set against a Harvard backdrop, and the combination of true creepiness dropped into an undergraduate social setting is very effective: It’s a tightly written, tensely memorable short novel."