Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone

[boxofdelights]

Maybe I should be embarrassed by how much I love and identify with Jane Doe, who says she's a sociopath.

I love how perceptive and logical she is about the differences between what people say they are doing, what they think they are doing, and what they are actually doing. I love her honesty. I love her loyalty to the one person she cares about.

I identify with the way she reads genre fiction in order to understand human behavior. Is that a sociopath thing? I used to read a lot of mysteries because it was so satisfying when the detective would make some confident statements about how humans do and do not behave. I understood that Agatha Christie was not the best tool for understanding people, but she was better than anything else I had available.

Comments

[sasha_feather]

I do not think that's necessarily a sociopath thing, no. Maybe a non-neurotypical thing.

[sovay]

I identify with the way she reads genre fiction in order to understand human behavior. Is that a sociopath thing?

I think it is extremely normal to use fiction to try to understand people. I suppose that's not the only thing it's good for, but it is one of its major uses.

[adrian_turtle]

It's odd how little difference there is between "sociopaths" and "everyone else." Perhaps less difference between "people who are curious about psychology" and "people who aren't, particularly.

[jesse_the_k]

Indeed, isn't this why the novel was dismissed as "women's business" because the point was trying to understand how people work?

[yasaman]

Oh, I loved that book! It made me deeply want an entire series about sociopathic women enacting a just vagenda of manocide. Between her honesty and her clear-eyed take on people, Jane was such a weirdly soothing narrator to spend time with.

[boxofdelights]

weirdly soothing
Yes!