Story of a Sociopath

by Julia Navarro

Overview

I’m scum. Yes, I always have been. . . . I know what I did, and what I should have done.
 
A spellbinding and provocative psychological thriller that shows just how far a man will go to win the most enduring and ruthless of games: the game of power.  
 
Raised in the upper echelons of elite New York society, Thomas Spencer has never wanted for much. But much is hardly enough for a man whose greatest satisfaction lies in shattering the happiness of others. Thomas, the black sheep of his family, harbors only resentment toward those closest to him for what they have more of: good looks, good cheer, good social graces. But what Thomas may lack in charm, he makes up for in cunning. And it is this that will serve him best when he trades in his glittering world of privilege for a chance to claw his way to the top—on his own terms, and at any cost. As Thomas achieves fame and success as an ad man, he becomes ever more deeply entrenched in an insidious underworld of media, politics, and women, and an astonishing picture emerges of a complex, destructive personality who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Shameless and electrifying, Story of a Sociopath illuminates the true nature of power through the mind of a master psychological manipulator.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101973257
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/25/2016
Pages:	864
Sales rank:	718,470
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Julia Navarro is a journalist, political analyst, and the internationally bestselling author of six novels, including The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud and The Bible of Clay. Her fiction has been translated into more than thirty languages. She lives in Madrid.

Read an Excerpt

I’m dying. It’s not that I’m terminally ill or that my doctors have declared me a lost cause. The last time they saw me was to tell me that I was in pretty good shape, especially for someone who’s suffered a heart attack and had valve replacement surgery. My blood sugar levels are a bit high, and so is my cholesterol, and my blood pressure’s on the edge, but it’s nothing, they say, that can’t be fixed by tak­ing a few pills every day, going on a diet, and giving up cigarettes and alcohol.
 
“Go for a walk. The best thing is to go for a walk. It’s the best medicine. Lots of people with your medical history would be pleased to look like you,” the doctor said, trying to cheer me up.
 
I’m not that much older than him, eight or ten years at the most. I didn’t say anything. Why should I? I know that I’m dying and I don’t need blood tests or cardiograms to prove it. How do I know? I know because I look at myself in the mirror every morning and see the brown patches that have sprouted on my skin. And not an inch of my skin that hasn’t lost its elasticity.
 
I look at my hands and what do I see? Blue threads showing through the skin. The same blue threads that crisscross my legs. They are veins, as hard as stone now.
 
“You are more interesting than you were when you were twenty,” the hypocrites say. Liars. Especially the women. The only thing interesting about me is my bank account and my entry in Who’s Who.
 
It’s been a while since I realized that other people don’t see you for who you are, but rather for what you have, for what you represent. The same gray hair, the same grayish skin: these would be looked at with indifference or even disgust if I were one of those wretched creatures who can be found in any corner of the city.
 
How much longer do I have? A day perhaps, a week, five, six, ten years . . . or maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up with a sharp pain in my chest, or find a lump while I’m in the shower, or faint in the street, and the same pleasant doctor will tell me that I’ve got cancer somewhere, in my lungs, my pancreas, wherever. Or he’ll tell me that my tired heart has given out again, and I’ll need a new valve. From one day to the next death will show its face.
 
But I don’t need a lump, or a fainting fit, or my heart to beat out of time. I know that I am dying because I’ve reached that age when there’s no more fooling yourself and you sense that you are living on borrowed time.
 
Tonight death has filled my thoughts and I’ve started to won­der what the last minute of my life will be like. I’m afraid that it will be in a hospital bed, without any power to make decisions about my own existence. I imagine myself incapable of moving, incapable of speech, communicating by signs or with glances, with nobody able to understand or share my suffering.
 
We don’t choose where or when we are born, but we should at least be able to decide how to confront the final moment of our lives. But that’s denied to us as well.
 
When I know that the hour has come when death will visit, I’ll try to work out how to greet her, how to avoid her for a while, but above all how to start the trek into nonexistence.
 
And so, as I await that treacherous knock on the door, tonight I am overwhelmed by memories of my life, and they all leave the taste of bile in my mouth.
 
I’m scum. Yes, I always have been and I can’t make myself regret being scum, for having been scum. Although if what the physicists say is true, and time is just a construct of the human mind, we should have the chance to walk backward, to live the life we could have lived but did not.
 
Am I wrong if I think and say that we would all change parts of our past? That we would do things differently from how we have done them? If we could retrace our footsteps . . . Maybe even I would behave differently.
 
There are people who say, out loud, that they regret nothing. I don’t believe them. Most people have consciences in spite of themselves. I was born without a conscience, or at least I never knew where to find one, but perhaps one will knock on my door tonight. But I will try not to let her in, because nothing can change the things that torment us.
 
Tonight, as I look death in the face, I’ll go over what I have lived through. I know what I did, and what I should have done.

Editorial Reviews

09/05/2016
As thick as the DSM, Navarro’s (The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud) latest is a loose, baggy monster about a particularly monstrous character. The titular sociopath is Thomas Spencer, born “without a conscience” to a New York family whom he terrorizes from an early age. His youthful exploits—scheming to break up his parents, flirting with murdering his brother—lay the groundwork for a lifetime of sometimes motiveless, sometimes motivated malignity. Thomas ascends in the world of advertizing, public relations, and political campaigning through a series of repetitive episodes usually involving blackmail, coercion, and various flat characters hissing, snarling, and scoffing at one another (“How dare you,” almost everyone in Thomas’s orbit eventually asks him). Too many scenes drag on, and further weighing down the novel are numerous, and pointless, sections detailing how Thomas could have acted were he not a self-avowed sociopath. Malevolent characters can of course be wickedly fun, as demonstrated by the narrators of novels such as John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure or Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, but those morally challenged gentlemen delighted readers with their fancy prose styles. Here, by contrast, is Thomas describing a sexual encounter: “It was a voyage of discovery into sensations I did not know existed.” Navarro’s is an earnest large-scale portrait, but the subject deserves better; after all, sociopaths are people too. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

International Praise for Julia Navarro’s Story of a Sociopath

“Julia Navarro is one of the finest authors in Spanish literature.” —La Vanguardia (Barcelona)

“Dissects the ambition, greed, and selfishness of human beings.” —El Correo (Bilbao)

“[Navarro] aims high. Perhaps that’s why she launched her book amongst skyscrapers. Story of Sociopath is more than a change of register—it’s a dissection of evil.” —La Razón (Madrid)

“[Navarro] dances through this narrative.” —El Pueblo Vasco (Vizcaya)

“Like great historians-turned-writers, this bestselling Spanish-language dame does not wince when it comes to surprising the reader.” —ABC (Madrid)

“Julia Navarro takes a turn to the dark side [in] a novel revolving around the psychology of its characters.” —El Mundo (Madrid)

From the Publisher

Sept. 7, 2016
Bestselling Spanish author Navarro (Shoot, I'm Already Dead, 2013, etc.) details the life choices of an unpleasant character in this aptly titled novel.Thomas Spencer reflects on his past because he knows he's dying. "Tonight I am overwhelmed by memories of my life, and they all leave the taste of bile in my mouth." "As I look death in the face, I'll go over what I have lived through. I know what I did, and what I should have done." As a child of privilege growing up in New York City, he torments his nanny and frames his teacher. He tries to kill his little brother by pushing him out the window, then to separate his parents by convincing his father his mother is having an affair (she isn't). Later, he becomes an adman and moves on to blackmail, affairs, domestic violence, political machinations. He describes himself as "scum," "a scorpion." Other characters call him "a miserable bastard...a son of a bitch," "a man with no principles." When his mother dies of cancer: "I searched within myself for some emotion, but I couldn't feel a thing." He imagines the way each pivotal scene would have gone if he'd acted differently, but: "I wasn't struck with remorse for a single moment." This goes on for more than 800 pages, and the writing often feels banal. Of sex with a "high-end" prostitute he later drives to suicide: "It was a voyage of discovery into sensations I did not know existed." Of the differences between New York and London: "New Yorkers are more communicative and less formal than the British." There are dark plot twists, but the central question remains the same. "I can't stop asking myself if this life would have been better, the one I didn't want to live because I preferred to be a son of a bitch....But I never wanted to be anything other than what I am." Bullying narcissists make poor company, and the refusal to allow this one to learn anything is a risky authorial move.

Kirkus Review