Loving Mr. Spock: A Different Kind of Love

Are men and women ‘differently wired’? Danny certainly is. When he meets Barbara, he tells her frankly that he’s going to get her drunk and have sex with her all night. She laughs, but soon she realises that there‘s a reason this handsome man has no filter. This intelligent and amusing true-life account charts the ups and downs of loving someone with Asperger’s, dwelling on the highs (Danny’s wit, his charm, his encyclopaedic knowledge of the things he’s passionate about) as well as the lows- heightened sensory modes, black depressions, and the unavoidable bluntness. Danny also has a tendency to medicate himself with alcohol, which makes him even more unpredictable, and isn‘t often something you come across in sanitised accounts of non-neurotypical lives. You can also discover parts of the condition in this book that aren’t covered, or just depicted wrongly, by Hollywood depictions of autism and genius in well-meaning blockbusters. The title, and the book’s slightly Bridget Jones-style story, occasionally veer towards gendered stereotyping of the ‘aren’t all men a bit autistic?’ variety, but there’s no doubt that there’s nobody quite like Danny, and despite the title- which does its job- there’s no sense here that people with autism are lacking in humour.