I first read The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion back at the beginning of June. I loved it then and, after rereading it again this weekend, I love it still.
Melbourne-based genetics professor Don Tillman is about as socially awkward a human being as you could hope to find. He has never had a romantic relationship and, when the book begins he has only two friends: Gene, a fellow professor whose real life work is trying to sleep with a woman from every country, and Claudia, Gene’s psychologist wife whose tolerance for her open marriage is wearing thin. Though Gene and Claudia are more socially adept than Don, their attempts to help him find a partner haven’t yielded much:
Gene and Claudia tried for a while to assist me with the Wife Problem. Unfortunately, their approach was based on the traditional dating paradigm, which I had previously abandoned on the basis that the probability of success did not justify the effort and negative experiences. I am thirty-nine years old, tall, fit and intelligent, with a relatively high status and above-average income as an associate professor. Logically, I should be attractive to a wide range of women. In the animal kingdom, I would succeed in reproducing.
In the animal kingdom, Don might succeed. In Melbourne, not so much. Seeking a solution, Don comes up with The Wife Project. This involves a detailed questionnaire meant to weed out any unviable candidates, unviable in this case meaning anyone who is a vegetarian, who is unpunctual, who smokes, who does not have a graduate-level education…the exacting list goes on.
But when Don meets Rosie, who is the exact opposite of the woman he is hoping to find with The Wife Project, things begin to change. Logically, it makes no sense for him to spend time with her. She is not a viable candidate for marriage (being a perpetually late vegetarian smoker, among other things) and yet he still finds himself enjoying the time he spends with her, though his interactions with her throw the rest of his carefully scheduled life into chaos. And when he discovers Rosie is trying to discover who her birth father is, what could be more natural than Don, a geneticist, offering his assistance? So begins The Rosie Project.
This is just such a sweet book. It is funny and quirky but it is the tenderness with which Simsion treats his narrator that makes it so special. As I said, I’ve already read it twice this year and you can be sure that I’ll be rereading it many times in the years to come.
This sounds like a great read. I’ll have to pick this one up.
It is great! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
I agree, this sounds wonderful! I’m off to check the library catalogue.
Only 55 people in line ahead of me 🙂
Hopefully that’s for more than one copy! Either way, it is worth the wait.
I can’t wait to read this book – it’s been on my wish list for ages!
I hope you love it as much as I do!
I have had my eye on this book for a while and your review confirms that I should hunt it down!
Harvee
Book Dilettante
You really should! Enjoy.
Thanks for your great review. I’ve had this book out from the library, but did not get a chance to read it. I’m even more curious now! I’ll be checking it out again.
Wonderful! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
I loved this book. It was one of the most delightful and surprising books I read this year. I’m glad to know it holds up on a re-read!
Delighted to hear from another of its fans!
Sounds lovely, and the library has it on order. Duly requested!
Excellent!
I loved this, the more so because I’m low on the Asperger’s Syndrome myself and I could identify with so much in the way that Don sees the world. I think Simsion shows great understanding and empathy. It’s a book I would pass on to anyone who wanted to appreciate the day to day existence of a high achieving Asperger’s sufferer.
Very interesting to hear your take on it, Alex.
I too loved this book and I am looking forward to rereading it for book club soon. I had the great pleasure of attending an author event with Graeme Simsion and he was very funny to listen to as well as in writing. I am glad to see this book doing well as that makes the chance of the movie adaptation actually happening just that bit more likely. I do have to say though it is a bit weird to see the book with something other than the red cover we have here!
I think the red cover is a better design for the book but, on its own merits, I like this cover too. Lucky you getting to discuss this for book club!
I loved this book and have loaned it to friends who have also enjoyed it. Parts of it are very funny – would be a super movie.
As Marg alludes to above, the movies rights have been bought so keep your fingers crossed that it actually moves forward to production!
[…] thanks to Claire at Captive Reader for recommending this; it was a whole lot of fun, and a perfect use of my […]
I bought this book yesterday because I’d seen how highly you’d recommended it here. Thank you! I think this is one of those books that I will re-read multiple times. It has great humour, but I also found it very moving, for some reason. I think I identify with the narrator, although I don’t fall on the autism spectrum, and I don’t think the kind of amazing memory he seems to have. I definitely don’t have those spectacular organizational skills. But I have to admit that many of his observations about normal society, while socially inept, and even seemingly weird, have occurred to me at various points of time. Also, while I will never stick out the way Don does, I have spent a significant amount of time feeling different from my peers and wondering why I can’t be like everyone else.
I just really enjoyed this book 🙂
That’s wonderful! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I’ve already reread it and cam easily see myself doing so time and again.
[…] The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (2013, 295 pages.) Recommended by The Captive Reader […]