{"id":700,"date":"2010-04-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T04:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=700"},"modified":"2025-01-01T13:08:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T00:08:26","slug":"the-rosie-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/04\/27\/the-rosie-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rosie Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Graeme Simsion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Text Publishing<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, April 27th 2010 <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Rosie Project<\/em> <\/strong>by Graeme Simsion has been earning high praise from reviewers around the English-speaking world, and for good reason. I was enchanted with it, and particularly it\u2019s narrator, right from the start. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The character in question, Don Tillman, is for the most part a happy man. He has a satisfying research career, a tenure-track position at the local University, a life organised for maximum efficiency and predictability, and two friends: his colleague Gene whose goal in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world, and Gene\u2019s wife, Claudia, who also serves as Don\u2019s unofficial councillor. The one thing he lacks is a life-partner and freely admits he has serious deficiencies in the area of romance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After yet another date founders (the woman in question insists that apricot and mango ice-cream taste completely different but refuses to take part in an experiment to test her hypothesis), he decides to approach the problem scientifically, and with Gene and Claudia\u2019s help, he puts together a 16-page questionnaire with which to screen women for their potential suitability as a long-term mate.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having posted the test on-line, he is just about to embark on The Wife Project in earnest when Rosie Jarmen arrives at his office door. She wants to find her biological father, but all she knows is that about him is that she was conceived at a graduation party for her mother\u2019s medical class and needs Don\u2019s help to DNA test the attendees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the fact that Rosie is most definitely not marriage material \u2013 she smokes, drinks, doesn\u2019t eat meat and thinks ice-cream has distinct flavours \u2013 and that her request will seriously interfere with his other work, Don soon becomes completely immersed in the Father Project and finds himself in increasingly strange situations as they attempt to get samples to test. Although he discovers unexpected benefits, including a potential new career as a cocktail waiter, Don is at a loss to explain why he continues to act in such an illogical fashion.\u00a0There\u2019s just something about Rosie\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways this is a standard comic romance and handled badly. Don\u2019s lack of insight could easily tiresome or frustrating (although it is never stated explicitly it is clear he has Asperger\u2019s, a fact he completely recognise despite giving a lecture on the syndrome at the start of the novel), but his child-like naivety is part of what makes him such a charming character.\u00a0 Similarly, the plot may be familiar, but its twists and turns are itself is wonderfully absurd, and getting a male perspective on classic chic-lit territory does a lot to redeem a genre I usually have little time for.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is obvious from the afterward, Simsion has put a lot of time and effort into this tale, and it has gone through many iterations as both short story and play before settling into its final form. With its sympathetic portrayal of a character on the autism spectrum and its widespread acclaim as an exceptional debut, The Rosie Project<\/em> reminded me in many ways of Mark Haddon\u2019s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 It is certainly every bit as good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/comic-romance-charms-male-perspective-chick-lit-territory<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graeme Simsion
\n
\nOtago Daily Times review April 27th <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[180,370,183,18],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-180","tag-fiction","tag-graeme-simsion","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1684,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions\/1684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}