October 2013

I had heard a lot about Graeme Simsion’s THE ROSIE PROJECT, and reading it I see why. It’s the kind of book that makes you smile --- and laugh --- as you read it, and it’s also wickedly clever.

In it, Don Tillman is a socially awkward professor of genetics who sees all of life through a scientific lens. He has not had success in dating, so he decides to attack this the way he does everything else in life: with a plan. He crafts a 16-page questionnaire in a quest to find the perfect mate. While I know this is ill-conceived, somehow the fact that Don is approaching the issue this way is both charming and humorous. The first women to answer it fail, but Don plunges on. And then he meets Rosie, who does not pass the questionnaire, but instead brings Don a project he can help her with. She wants to find her biological father, and who but a geneticist can help with that? So the "Wife Project" that Don calls his questionnaire becomes the "Father Project" to help Rosie. And well, you can figure out where things go from there. Complete comedy!

Don is humorous in all that he does, from sizing up people by their BMI (body measurement index, and yes, I did go to look up mine) to the blunt way he cruises through life. I finished it in one sitting and immediately went in and wrote the person who had handed it to me. In fact, I wrote two people since I had this championed to me more than once. It’s clever, smart and fun, as well as being very well-plotted and written. A nice combo. The way Don overthinks EVERYTHING is really amusing. A total rave!