Something Novel: The Rosie Project [Book Review]

“The Rosie Project”

Book by Graeme Simsion

Synopsois (from Amazon): The art of love is never a science: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.   Rosie Jarman possesses all these qualities. Don easily disqualifies her as a candidate for The Wife Project (even if she is “quite intelligent for a barmaid”). But Don is intrigued by Rosie’s own quest to identify her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on The Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie―and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.

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***Note to reader: To be fair, romance really isn’t in my wheel-house***

Barf.

Yep.  I typed “barf.”

First, given that autism is a spectrum disorder, it’s really difficult to define what is or is not a trait of someone with Asperger’s, but I felt that, in order for this love story to work, Don Tillman would have had to be more charming.  Rather than a super-clever, sly Sherlock Holmes type whose obsessions are all-consuming and whose tolerance for stupidity low, we are given Lieutenant Commander Data; a being awkwardly walking the line between man and machine.  His love interest?  Why, she’s a fun-loving, rock n’ roller who plays by her own rules... and smokes... and swears.

Wacky, right?

And THAT’s the problem I had with the book.  I didn’t buy that Rosie fell HARD for Don Tillman.  I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to accept that he so willingly and quickly gave up a LOT of his comforts just to win the love of a woman he had already dismissed… harshly… and to her face.

So, the love story itself, which the whole book revolves around, was wholly unbelievable to me.  It was like the end of The Breakfast Club… in real life there’s no way Clair and Bender would have ended up together, or the jock would have been caught DEAD with the art chick.  The Rosie Project had that same hard-to-believe feeling that wreaked of badly constructed fan fiction.

That having been said, there were some laugh-out-loud moments of Tillman attempting to understand the human condition and ascertain why we behave as we do.  Seeing the world through his eyes was both entertaining and heart-wrenching, as you realize what comes so naturally to everyone around Tillman seemed so out of reach for him.  His struggles with what is appropriate certainly highlighted the strengths and weaknesses in our society; we are so quick to judge, and so slow to want to understand.

Although I didn’t like this book very much at all, I do know a few people who were swept up in the characters, their lives, and the events that were slowly, but surely, bringing them together.  If romance is your thing, add The Rosie Project to your list.  If it’s not, skip it and wait for the movie.

Favorite quote: “Jesus addresses the angry mob who are stoning a prostitute.  ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’  A stone flies through the air and hits the woman.  ‘Sometimes you really piss me off, Mother.’”