I clocked this book on my daughter’s bookshelves some time ago; it’s the first of a trilogy, and, whilst cat-sitting for the weekend, decided the time was right. The fact that one of my favourite authors – Kristin Hannah – recommended it so highly was a definite plus point.
Don Tillman decides it is time he got married, but he sets the bar quite high for his perfect woman. He has dates, but never a second date, and we are not far into the book before we can see exactly why that is (though he cannot).
He is thirty-nine, a geneticist, with a scientific brain that enables him to have in-depth conversations with like-minded people. Unfortunately, he tries to engage his dates with debates on various issues prevalent in his work. His friends Gene and Claudia have tried to help him in his search for the perfect wife; outwardly he is a catch. He is intelligent, good-looking and quite well-off, but his social skills are non-existent. Small talk, to him, is a waste of time; he needs to know a woman is compatible with him to such a high degree that his goals seem totally unrealistic. He can estimate a person’s body-mass index and weight just by looking at them, and evaluates everything analytically.
He decides that the best way to avoid wasting time on his dates is to produce a questionnaire, and turns up at Gene’s house with it one evening to get his and his wife’s opinion. He has condensed it down to sixteen double-sided sheets, with questions on just about everything from body-mass index to views on wearing jewellery, smoking, and the importance of punctuality. Claudia condenses it further to something more approaching reality, and Don begins his search in earnest.
The search is progressing nowhere fast when a young woman turns up at his office one day saying that Gene had sent her. Her name is Rosie, and she is wearing large jewellery and torn clothing, but her age and body-mass index seem to fit the bill. Don asks her out to dinner at an expensive restaurant. He arrives first and is denied access as he is not wearing a jacket. He insists that he is; his Gore-Tex jacket is a jacket – it says so on the label. The restaurant offers to lend him a dinner jacket for the evening, but as Don continues to insist he doesn’t need one, the heavies are called in. Using his aikido skills, he floors both of them as Rosie arrives.
Deciding to go back to his apartment, Don says he will cook dinner. He cracks on with that while Rosie reorganises his living space. She puts up a makeshift table on the balcony, gets out the silver cutlery (a gift from his parents, never used), and brings out two half-bottles of wine. She informs him she is mostly vegetarian but will eat seafood, and he retrieves the live lobster from its home in the bath, transferring it to the freezer as the most humane way of killing it.
They get through yet another half-bottle of wine, making Don realise he will have to cut back the following day to compensate, and he discovers that Rosie smokes. She has failed on so many points of his questionnaire, yet she intrigues him. He has to see her again, and the only contact he has is knowing the bar where she works. His excuse – to himself – for seeing her again is that she doesn’t know who her real father is, but believes it is not the man she has called father all her life. Don, as a geneticist, can help her by eliminating the possibles.
So this intriguing woman, whom Gene “threw in as a wild card”, becomes part of Don’s life, and he begins the Father Project. This involves listing all possibles – men whom her mother met at her medical graduation party. After eliminating men of other ethnicities and those who have already died, the next step is to gain DNA samples from those remaining. The subterfuge involved is not too difficult for a man of Don’s analytical mind.
The more he sees of Rosie, the less he understands his own feelings. Emotions are alien to him; all he needs in a partner is compatibility. As Rosie is the least compatible person he can imagine, failing on most of the questions on his questionnaire, their path towards love is not an easy one. She is everything he dislikes, and yet …
His social ineptitude and inability to be anything other than honest and direct force Claudia to take on the task of tutoring him in social graces. In the cause of the hunt for Rosie’s father, he learns how to mix drinks so that the two of them can take a job for the evening at a function where there will be several possible candidates and a chance to obtain DNA unobtrusively. For a date with a reply to his questionnaire, he practises dance moves so he can invite her to a ball, and gradually his social skills begin to improve.
The relationship between Don and Rosie is fraught with misunderstandings, but love, as they say, will find a way. The two most mismatched people, starting at completely opposite ends of the spectrum, learn the art of compromise. This is such a feel-good book – ideal for a holiday read or for times when you just need to curl up and switch off the outside world for a while.
ABOUT THE BOOK
An international sensation, this hilarious, feel-good novel is narrated by an oddly charming and socially challenged genetics professor on an unusual quest: to find out if he is capable of true love.
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.
Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.
The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR | WEBSITE
Graeme Simsion is a former IT consultant and the author of two nonfiction books on database design who decided, at the age of fifty, to turn his hand to fiction. His first novel, The Rosie Project, was published in 2013 and translation rights have been sold in forty languages. Movie rights have been optioned to Sony Pictures. The sequels, The Rosie Effect, and The Rosie Result, were also bestsellers, with total sales of the series in excess of five million.
Graeme's third novel was The Best of Adam Sharp, a story of a love affair re-kindled - and its consequences. Movie rights have been optioned by Vocab Films / New Sparta Films with Toni Collette attached to direct.
Creative Differences was originally created as an 'Audible Original' audiobook, but is now in print with a collection of short stories from across Graeme's career.
Two Steps Forward is a story of renewal set on the Camino de Santiago, written with his wife, Anne Buist, whose own books include Medea's Curse, Dangerous to Know and This I would Kill for, The Long Shadow and Locked Ward. Movie rights were optioned by Fox Searchlight. A sequel, Two Steps Onward, was published in 2021.
Graeme is a frequent presenter of seminars on writing. The Novel Project is his practical, step by step approach to writing a novel or memoir.
