Unreliable narrator? Check. Quirky characters? Check. Fish-out-of-water? Check. Funny scenes? Check. The Rosie Project manages to push all these buttons, plus add a semi-sweet love story, a bit of a mystery and some academic humor. No wonder it’s been a surprise international hit for debut author Graeme Simsion.
Don Tillman is a genius geneticist, the kind who makes other genius geneticists (and geniuses of all other specialties) look like…well, like me. Part of his success is an ability to focus on the work at hand; part of it is an eidetic memory; part is a determination to win at anything he turns a hand to. But those qualities also add up to an inflexible loner, probably with Asperger’s Syndrome and no idea why he never has a second date.
Stymied by women who smoke, who are never on time, who eat apricot ice cream, are adamant vegetarians, or show any conflicting values, Don decides he’s going to weed out those who are demonstrably unsuited for him. His method? A 16-page questionnaire covering every conceivable idiosyncrasy that might affect his ability to be around that person.
One of Don’s test subjects is Rosie Jarman, a barmaid, smoker, chronically late, pretty and opinionated young woman. Obviously not a match for Don on any count. However, she presents him with a puzzle he cannot resist—the opportunity to collect DNA from a limited but scattered population to find her natural father. The technical part is easy, but he’s intrigued by the difficulty of finding the subjects. Thus begins the Rosie Project.
Simsion perfectly captures the interior voice of a man with Asperger’s, and in multiple comedic scenes demonstrates why Don doesn’t get along with those who are conditioned to follow social conventions (as he sees it), or those who have learned to interpret the myriad of clues that lubricate social interaction (as everyone else sees it). The Apricot Ice Cream Disaster, the Jacket Man Incident, the Pig Trotter’s Disaster, the Flounder Incident, the Bianca Disaster, the Aspie Lecture—all point to Don’s seeming inability to function in public. But gradually, and in small ways, Don learns to look for and interpret, and finally to empathize with, distasteful human emotions.
If this sounds like a formula Hollywood script, it’s because it started as one (a script, that is), but Simsion realized that dialogue alone wasn’t enough to portray Don without making him an object of ridicule. The result of his move to the novel form is a romantic comedy with depth and original characters, and an unsympathetic narrator we quickly come to cheer for. It comes across initially as a light read, but I think readers will remember Don Tillman for quite a while.
Check the WRL catalog for The Rosie Project.
Blogging for a Good Book 
I really loved this book. And yes Don Tillman is a character I do remember well :)
Reblogged this on The Book Nook Magazine.
Great review! I may as well pick it up from the local bookstore. Many thanks. :)
I loved this book, and I missed Don and his antics when it was over! Great review!
I’ve had this at the bottom of my to-read pile for a while, and this has definately spurred me to read it soon!
Great review.
HATED this book. Its ending, which tells us that people on the autism spectrum could give up all of their annoying quirks and tics and schedules if only they really really really wanted to and just tried hard enough, is grotesquely offensive, and a massive misrepresentation of what autism spectrum disorders really are.
I have now bought this and am looking forward to reading it.,
I loved this one, too. Have you read Come, Thou Tortoise? It has a similar feel.
Reblogged this on Pen Sealed!.
The Rosie Project gives keen insight to a personality disorder that is becoming more common in America, but it manages to humanize it. The book is humorous, surprising, and hard to put down.