The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion

GENRE: Mainstream Fiction, Romance

Quirky, likeable characters abound in this romantic comedy featuring Don Tillman, a brilliant geneticist who struggles romantically, and Rosie Jarman, an impulsive waitress. Fans of the television series The Big Bang Theory will enjoy this story of a socially awkward man finding love in unexpected places.

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author biography

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.

Graeme's fourth novel, 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. Movie rights have been optioned by Fox Searchlight with Ellen DeGeneris to produce. - goodreads.com

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reviews

Kirkus Reviews

/* Starred Review */ Polished debut fiction, from Australian author Simsion, about a brilliant but emotionally challenged geneticist who develops a questionnaire to screen potential mates but finds love instead. The book won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. "I became aware of applause. It seemed natural. I had been living in the world of romantic comedy and this was the final scene. But it was real." So Don Tillman, our perfectly imperfect narrator and protagonist, tells us. While he makes this observation near the end of the book, it comes as no surprise--this story plays the rom-com card from the first sentence. Don is challenged, almost robotic. He cannot understand social cues, barely feels emotion and can't stand to be touched. Don's best friends are Gene and Claudia, psychologists. Gene brought Don as a postdoc to the prestigious university where he is now an associate professor. Don is a cad, a philanderer who chooses women based on nationality--he aims to sleep with a woman from every country. Claudia is tolerant until she's not. Gene sends Rosie, a graduate student in his department, to Don as a joke, a ringer for the Wife Project. Finding her woefully unsuitable, Don agrees to help the beautiful but fragile Rosie to learn the identity of her biological father. Pursuing this Father Project, Rosie and Don collide like particles in an atom smasher: hilarity, dismay and carbonated hormones ensue. The story lurches from one set piece of deadpan nudge-nudge, wink-wink humor to another: We laugh at, and with, Don as he tries to navigate our hopelessly emotional, nonliteral world, learning as he goes. Simsion can plot a story, set a scene, write a sentence, and finesse a detail. A pity more popular fiction isn't this well-written. If you liked Australian author Toni Jordan's Addition (2009), with its math-obsessed, quirky heroine, this book is for you. A sparkling, laugh-out-loud novel. (Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2013)

Library Journal

Don Tillman is a scientist. He thinks logically and approaches the world in a similar manner. Hence, when he needs to find a wife, he creates a long and involved questionnaire to winnow out unsuitable choices. (His requirements: nonsmoker, body mass index under 26, punctual, mathematically literate, a meat eater, and so on.) The 16-page, double-sided, scientifically valid document, he believes, offers his best chance of finding the perfect partner. That is, until he meets the fiery and intelligent Rosie Jarman. Rosie, who doesn't meet any of his requirements, is trying to track down her biological father, and she needs Don's expertise in genetics to do it. The two pursue their quests in tandem, but gradually, as their relationship deepens, their missions converge. VERDICT Readers will root for Don and Rosie throughout Simsion's delightful romantic comedy. Fans of the TV show The Big Bang Theory will see shades of Sheldon and Penny in these characters. [See Prepub Alert, 4/29/13; this title was also touted at the fifth annual BEA Librarians Shout and Share panel.—Ed.]— Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH --Robin Nesbitt (Reviewed September 1, 2013) (Library Journal, vol 138, issue 16, p104)

Publisher's Weekly

/* Starred Review */ Read-out-loud laughter begins by page two in Simsion’s debut novel about a 39-year-old genetics professor with Asperger’s—but utterly unaware of it—looking to solve his Wife Problem. Don Tillman cannot find love; episodes like the Apricot Ice Cream Disaster prevent so much as a second date with a woman. His devised solution is the Wife Project: dating only those who “match” his idiosyncratic standards as determined by an exacting questionnaire. His plans take a backseat when he meets Rosie, a bartender who wants him to help her determine her birth father’s identity. His rigidity and myopic worldview prevents him from seeing her as a possible love interest, but he nonetheless agrees to help, even though it involves subterfuge and might jeopardize his position at the university. What follows are his utterly clueless, but more often thoroughly charming exploits in exploring his capacity for romance. Helping Tillman are his only two friends, an older, shamelessly philandering professor, and the professor’s long-suffering wife, who may soon draw the line in the sand. With Asperger’s growing visibility in pop culture in recent years, as on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, this novel is perfectly timed. Agent: David Forrer, Inkwell Management. (Oct.) --Staff (Reviewed July 1, 2013) (Publishers Weekly, vol 260, issue 26, p)

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