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A review by chramies
Sociopaths In Love by Andersen Prunty
4.0
Actually what this reminded me of was not so much "American Psycho" - although the idea that crimes could be committed undetected, possibly because they are all in the criminal's mind, is there. More "Natural Born Criminals" and Ben Elton's "Popcorn" which put forward the idea that oldstyle Hollywood gave poor people escapism but modern films rub their noses in their poverty, with predictable results. The idea of social invisibility is a neat trick but there is invisibility and there is invisibility - the suggestion that older women are actually invisible as social agents, but that older men are not so much invisible as there is an assumption that they are deviants and criminals. The poor and downtrodden may not figure much in present day capitalism but they are not as invisible as all that - just ask any young black man who has been stopped by the police for essentially being black in a public place while minding his own business.
"Sociopaths in Love" is Bizarro fiction: which of course means it doesn't need to make literal sense, as it is clearly a work of fiction anyhow. At what point does the OTT-ness detract from the narrative? Does the ending make sense? If you look at "American Psycho" regardless of whether or not some of the crime actually happens, there is at least one (the supposed shootout on a street in broad daylight) that is clearly fantasy in Patrick Bateman's mind. It's a movie, not reality. And as much as Bateman and AP may represent the frenzied doodling of a class of overpaid rich young men living on unearned wealth, SiL is at the other end of the scale - the frenzied etc. of the poor and disenfranchised. If nobody cares what you do, then what do you do for an encore?
"Sociopaths in Love" is Bizarro fiction: which of course means it doesn't need to make literal sense, as it is clearly a work of fiction anyhow. At what point does the OTT-ness detract from the narrative? Does the ending make sense? If you look at "American Psycho" regardless of whether or not some of the crime actually happens, there is at least one (the supposed shootout on a street in broad daylight) that is clearly fantasy in Patrick Bateman's mind. It's a movie, not reality. And as much as Bateman and AP may represent the frenzied doodling of a class of overpaid rich young men living on unearned wealth, SiL is at the other end of the scale - the frenzied etc. of the poor and disenfranchised. If nobody cares what you do, then what do you do for an encore?