‘The Rosie Project’ Will Charm You With Science

The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion

Paperback, 295 pages | purchase

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He ‘s a socially awkward scientist who ‘s note deafen to sarcasm. She ‘s an edgy young charwoman whose disengagement mode is sarcasm. Put them together, and hilarity ensues in australian IT adviser Graeme Simsion ‘s first novel, The Rosie Project. It ‘s an absolutely winning crackpot comedy about a bright, emotionally challenged geneticist who ‘s determined to find a desirable wife with the help of a carefully designed questionnaire, and the obviously unsuitable woman who keeps distracting him from his search. If you ‘re looking for sparkling entertainment along the lines of Where ‘d You Go Bernadette and When Harry Met Sally, The Rosie Project is this season ‘s fixate.

The book would n’t work, of course, if we could n’t see the sweetness and charm below Don Tillman ‘s geekiness. But Simsion ‘s hyper-efficient, fastidious 39-year-old narrator endears us from the moment he starts explaining his wife Problem, which of course is directly related to his people Problem. Like Christopher Boone, the 15-year-old narrator of Mark Haddon ‘s 2003 fresh, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, he ‘s appealing not precisely despite his eccentricities but because of them. The running jest in The Rosie Project is that “ Humans frequently fail to see what is close to them and obvious to others. ” This applies first base and foremost to Don, who ‘s distinctly somewhere on the autism spectrum, and merely as clearly oblivious about it. He ‘s besides forgetful about his attraction to Rosie Jarman, a beautiful doctoral candidate in psychology who beginning contacts him to settle a bet about an bizarre genetic question concerning the relationship between testis size and monogamy .

Missing social cues right and left, Don is under the mental picture that Rosie has been sent by his best supporter and colleague, Gene, as a campaigner for his Wife Project. He besides mistakes her half-time bartending occupation for her full-time identity, and finds her a spectacularly unsuitable prospect because she smokes, does n’t cook, and is always recently.

yet, in hurt of himself – and his programmed-to-the-minute schedule – he gets pulled into Rosie ‘s Father Project, a wild bay to identify her biological father. Their bawdy pursuit of DNA swab takes them all the way to New York, “ where being weird is acceptable. ”

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James Penlidis

James Penlidis

Don is n’t dazed, and he knows he has problems with familiarity. But he finds it hard to understand why people have trouble oneself with his time-saving Standardized Meal System ( which reduces “ cognitive load ” by rotating seven hilariously elaborate dishes on a stern weekly schedule ), or why his impermeable, intelligibly victor Gore-Tex jacket wo n’t do at a classy restaurant where jackets are required. Over their first dinner together, he tells Rosie that she seems “ quite healthy for a barmaid. ” “ The compliments precisely keep on come, ” Rosie responds tartly — at which point Don reflects that “ It seemed I was doing well, and I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction, which I shared with Rosie. ”

Although set in his ways and distinctly disadvantaged when it comes to tact, Don is n’t immutable — and The Rosie Project is in region about the joy that can come from openness to change. A firm believer in self-improvement, he ‘s convert one can master anything through discipline and application, including boning quail, cocktail mixology, ballroom dancing and sexual positions, ( the latter two learned from books and practiced with a skeleton from the university ‘s human body department ). When his philandering friend Gene asks if he ‘s ever had arouse, he says, “ Of course … It ‘s just that adding a second person makes it more complicate. ” “ fortunately I am accustomed to creating amusement unwittingly, ” Don remarks after cracking up his students by taking a personal call during a lecture. This charm, warm-hearted escapade, which celebrates the havoc — and pleasure — emotions can unleash, offers entertainment aplenty. Sharp negotiation, fantastic pace, physical hijinks, slapstick, a couple to root for, and more twists than a pack of Twizzlers — it ‘s no surprise that The Rosie Project is bound for the big screen. But read it beginning .