A slow descent into the mind of a stalker is a great way to Sergio Bizzio’s RAGE, from Bittler Lemon Press. José Maria is a 40-year-old man infatuated with a much younger woman, Rosa. She’s a live-in maid who works for what used to be a high-society family in Buenos Aires. The novel starts off with a slow burn of hard-boiled noir, with the brutal death of a foreman on the construction site on which José worked.
José runs to the one place he knows he can hide for what he thinks will be a few days: in the house where Rosa works. But events take a very different turn when the family she works for comes home a lot sooner than expected. Under the cover of night, he leaves the home … at least that is what he wants Rosa to believe.
Instead, he has moved into the upper floors of this large home, which has pretty much been abandoned by the family. The story follows José as he slowly loses his grip on reality, making up a fantasy life in his mind, projecting his perfect ideal of Rosa as his love. We watch as he sneaks around the home at odd hours to survive, taking food he figures no one will miss. He gets so wrapped up in his own world, he makes a pet out of a rat.
What makes the story even more compelling is that it takes place over a few years. How he is never spotted in all that time should be taken with a grain of salt, but we also get glimpses of the family that seems to have slowly lost not only its status in society, but a large portion of money. Even when José actually talks to Rosa through a separate phone line, he acts as though he is still in a relationship with he, which only adds to his delusions.
RAGE is not some cut-and-dry piece of noir or mystery. It’s more a true character study of man who made a bizarre choice in his life to hide away in plain sight. The cover claims that this book is more a portrait on society; if so, those portions might have been lost in translation, since what I read seemed more focused on José going out of his head to brutal extremes. One of the more original ideas to have come out, this is a novel that might slip through the cracks, if not for its supporters. —Bruce Grossman
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Sounds like BAD RONALD or HIDER IN THE HOUSE.