I’m hard pressed to find a character with a more vexing charm than Don Tillman, a genetics professor specializing in Asperger’s, and the spectrum of personality disorders. Unfortunately for Don, he has a full-blown case of the disease but doesn’t know it. Well, he does, but his friends are really aware, (his own family mistake’s his illness with homosexuality) but don’t want to say YOU HAVE ASPERGER’S! Don has decided that he wants to get married, and creates the Wife Project, a questionnaire that he gives women he is interested in. If they answer all the questions, right, or what Don thinks is right (none ever do), then this will help him make a decision on whom to marry, or make the dating process really easy, code for efficient, the search for Ms. Perfect Match. Don does everything with scientific precision. He estimates the BMI of every single person he meets.

The trouble is no one is this perfect! (If I sound exhausted, I am.) If one of these women smokes, she’s disqualified. A whole list of requirements that border on the strange, but coming from Don (not if you have this disease), they all sound really sane and reasonable. There is a scene early on where he goes to a dining establishment, (traveling by bike, to exercise and save fuel?) he arrives in a perfectly functional jacket, but it’s a thermal windbreaker, top of the line, and this is a place of fine dining. Hilarity ensues, as the bouncer wants to give him a dinner jacket, but he refuses it because there isn’t a better jacket in his mind than the one he is wearing. He has arrived at the restaurant to meet Rosie, who was introduced to him by his lower-than-whale-shit friend, Gene, (look up misogynistic in the dictionary, he’s a soulless asshole too) and this professional/friend relationship with Gene almost feels like a form of intentional cruelty on Gene’s part, like he is setting up Don to be the town joke.

Rosie is a disconnected barmaid that brims with misanthropic ideals, and when she meets rigid Don, copious intrigue ensues. When he realizes that there is an attraction, it means it’s time to study up on sex. He’s not too savvy between the sheets, so he consults a guidebook on sexual positions, practicing on a skeleton from the Anatomy department. He eventually memorizes every single move, except he’s never applied these skills to a real woman. Meanwhile, the Wife Project yields a few close calls, and Don dispenses them for the most arcane reasons, while Rosie makes excuses to linger. Don’s interactions with Rosie and Gene would be enough for any novel, plus the heroic mastery of every single aspect of his life, cooking, scheduling things down to the minute, eating, drinking, how long it takes to give a lecture on Asperger’s (and what to do when someone interrupts, and what her BMI is, and who in the audience suffers from this, where are they on the spectrum?), and how long it takes to clean his bathroom.

All this to say, the book is a complete joy, totally unique in it’s tone, and by far the most intriguing, inventive and wonderfully claustrophobic story I’ve ever read. There are several moments that seem acutely painful which have to do Higher Education politics, mixology, that all blend into a seat of your pants climax. Don has no empathy, isn’t capable of it. Sad movies do nothing for him, he’s a blank slate of emotion, and that kind of unbreakable behavior must have been brutal to write, but the results are magic.