The Journal of Best Practices

David Finch has autism, a diagnosis he embraced gleefully as an explanation as to why his marriage cooled off about as soon as it began. Indeed, he brings an autistic focus to trying to understand how he deviates from what he calls marital “best practices.” In doing so, he pulls no punches in explaining his behavior. He is even unflinchingly honest about when his flaws are not well-explained by his autism, for instance in exploring his sexist assumptions about gender dynamics in a marriage.

Unflinching honesty can sometimes be discomfiting in a memoir (see Alison Bechdel's “Are You My Mother?”), but in this case, the combination of Finch's dry humor and his commitment to self-improvement together allow it to be humorous, or at the very least, viewed empathetically.

Finch seems to be a lovely man, and his wife is super fabulous (said non-ironically), but it wasn't was I expected. There is too much padding. I think I would have enjoyed the New Yorker article though. That said, as someone who is neurotypical-ish herself, I did enjoy reading a book from the point of view of someone who does not the norm. There are not enough of those kind of books. So 3 starts for that.

Sometimes I wondered if his problem wasn't so much the Aspergers as it was that he's just a guy.