Book: The Rose Project.
Author: Graeme Simsion
Book Size: 257 pages
Book available: Amazon, For Free PDF You can contact me.
Moral and Introduction:
He’s a socially awkward scientist who doesn’t understand sarcasm. She’s an edgy young lady whose default mode is sarcasm. In Australian IT expert Graeme Simsion’s debut novel, The Rosie Project, they combine to create humor. It’s a hilarious dark comedy about a smart, emotionally troubled geneticist who is desperate to locate a good bride using a properly crafted questionnaire and the manifestly unsuitable lady who keeps diverting him from his search. The Rosie Project is this season’s fix for bright amusement in the vein of How’d You Go, Bernadette and Then when Harry Met Sally.
Of course, the novel wouldn’t work if we didn’t recognize the tenderness and charm behind Don Tillman’s geekiness. But Simsion’s hyper-efficient, meticulous 39-year-old narrator immediately endears us by revealing his Wife’s Problem, which is, of course, intimately tied to his People Problem. Like Christopher Boone, the 15-year-old storyteller of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel The Peculiar Episode of the Dog in the Night, he is intriguing not because of but because of his idiosyncrasies.
The Rosie Project’s running gag is that “Humans frequently fail to recognize what is near to them and evident to others.” This is especially true for Don, who is definitely on the autistic spectrum yet is completely unaware of it. He’s also blind to his feelings for Rosie Jarman, a stunning doctorate student in psychology who initially contacts him to pay a bet on an absurd genetic hypothesis about the connection between testicle size and monogamy.
Don is misinterpreting social signs and believes Rosie has been sent by his closest colleague and friend Gene, as a candidate for his Spouse Project. He also misidentifies her part-time bartender work as her full-time identity and dismisses her as an unacceptable option since she smokes, doesn’t cook, and is constantly late.
Despite himself — and his well-planned schedule — he is drawn into Rosie’s Father Project, a reckless quest to find her biological father. Their heinous quest for DNA samples leads them to New York, “being odd is OK.”
Don isn’t foolish, and he recognizes that he struggles with intimacy. But he can’t figure out why people don’t like his minute Normalized Meal Structure (which reduces “mental burden” by spinning seven bizarrely elaborate cuisines on a weekly schedule) or why his impervious, superior Gore-Tex coat won’t do at a fancy hotel in which jackets are required. During their first date, he remarks to Rosie that she is “very clever for a barmaid.” “The accolades just keep pouring,” Rosie says tartly, and Don adds, “Seemed so I did well, and I gave myself a minute of pleasure, which I enjoyed with Rosie.”
Don, despite his stubbornness and lack of subtlety, isn’t unchangeable — and The Rosie Project is about the joy that may come from being open to change. He believes that with concentration and effort, anybody can perfect everything, including shagging quail, cocktail culinary, ballroom dancing, and sexual positions (the latter two studied from literature and practiced using a skeletal from the university’s anatomical department). When his philandering pal Gene asks if he’s ever had sex, he replies, “I’ve never had sex.” “Without a doubt… It’s just that adding another person complicates everything.”
“Fortunately, I am used to unwittingly causing laughter,” Don says after making his pupils laugh by taking a private call during one lecture. This amusing, warm-hearted adventure, which celebrates the devastation — and pleasure — that emotions can cause, provides lots of entertainment. Sharp wit, fantastic pace, physical antics, humor, a relationship to root for, and more surprises than a box of Twizzlers — it’s no wonder that The Rosie Project has been optioned for a big screen adaptation. But first, read it.
