Could you get him to read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon? While it's not autobiographical, it sure feels like it. The narrator is autistic - Asperger's - and lives a very dysfunctional family life. He lives with his father, who is not coping well. Although the narrator (Christopher) can't see how he complicates lives, the reader can read between the lines. His problem solving skills are ingenious and the misunderstandings are funny/sad. You laugh, but if you live with it your heart aches a bit, too. However, Christopher manages to want some things so badly that he does what people thought was impossible for him, to get the answers he needs to sort out his life.
The ending is very positive, Christopher has changed a number of lives for the better, not just his own.
It's set in England but it should be fairly easy to follow. The language is deceptively simple but the book does not talk down in any way. You feel like you're reading a children's book - until he begins to talk about prime numbers, crime scenes and mathematics. it might give difficult child an insight into how hard it can be for other people who don't think/feel exactly the way he does. An enlightening, entertaining read.
I have other books I'd recommend, but they are in the category of fantasy satire and from what you say he'd probably get impatient with that.
Other possibilities - Isaac Asimov's robot short stories/books. "The Complete Robot" is a huge omnibus anthology of everything robotic written by Asimov. It comprises "I, Robot" and "The Rest of the Robots". "Bicentennial Man" is in there too, along with some later robot stories. Two novels in the same vein are "Caves of Steel" (a futuristic New York, trying to solve a murder with a robot as detective partner) and its sequel, "The Naked Sun". The robot in these two books, Daneel Olivaw, was the template for Data in "Star Trek: The Next Generation".
If he likes books which have also been made into movies, what about Michael Crichton? "Jurassic Park" is a good read, if he liked the movie. The book is far better. There are other books by Michael Crichton also made into movies (as well as some that should be) - "Congo", "Andromeda Strain", "Timeline", "The Terminal Man" and more.
Good stuff.
Marg