Tuesday 11 March 2014

Review: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project is wonderful and witty. Published by HarperCollins Canada, it's a love story between two misfits, whose quirks make them the perfect match. Rosie has emotional and psychological baggage and Don lives a compulsive life of organization and pragmatic behaviours that protect him from social chaos. Don is looking for a wife and Rosie is looking for her father. Two "projects" become one about self-discovery and about finding love. The Rosie Project is a story of finding the perfect person in an unexpected way, of life's unpredictability, and of finding ways to let your guard down and let love in.

Summary: A first-date dud, socially awkward and overly fond of quick-dry clothes, genetics professor Don Tillman has given up on love, until a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionnaire—a sixteen-page, scientifically researched questionnaire—to uncover the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver. Rosie is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent, strangely beguiling, and looking for her biological father a search that a DNA expert might just be able to help her with. The Rosie Project is a romantic comedy like no other. It is arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, and it will make you want to drink cocktails.

Don's humourous and hilariously awkward attempts to find companionship will have the reader both cringing and smiling. This is a bildungsroman of sorts, as Don changes from a creature of habit and compulsion, into a man of compassion, understanding, and real heart.  It reminds of The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon and Amy's relationship. Although Don is more of an adult and more masculine than Sheldon, Don is just as hilariously obnoxious and clueless about social etiquette. If you find this TV relationship funny, this book will be enjoyable for you.

The Rosie Project is a light and easy read for adult readers. It's a sweet and funny story of a misguided and unexpected love affair.

Highly recommended.

4.5 Stars

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