Intent on marrying, the chronically single professor embarks upon "The Wife Project", devising an obsessively detailed screening questionnaire for prospective partners, ruling out smokers, drinkers and bad time-keepers, among many others. "I am an expert at being laughed at," Don acknowledges, but this is far more subtle than two-dimensional comedy, for while we laugh at him, we also come to laugh – and cry – with him, as Simsion skilfully creates empathy for Don and his struggle to empathise. Whereas that novel filtered life through the perspective of 15-year-old Christopher Boone, Simsion here explores the effects of the condition upon adulthood – and his comic approach is what makes this novel distinctive. The subject of autism has been tackled in fiction before, most famously in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, published in 2003 and currently on stage in the West End.
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