Fiction books are tricky things, sometimes. For example… sometimes I hover on the grade should it be A- or should it be B+? I enjoyed it. The characters were engaging and well rounded… but does it answer those big questions, or does it have big ideas like I feel an A book should have. The Rosie Project encouraged me to think of larger concepts without trying to hit me over the head with them, which I loved. I do not like authors to treat me like I’m stupid. Well, I don’t like anyone to treat me like I’m stupid, but reading a book is a very intimate affair. The writer and the reader engage in a relationship of trust. I—as a reader—trust that the author is going to follow some conventional norms (I’m looking at you James Joyce, you betrayer of trust) and that there will be no “and it was all a dream” nonsense. If the author gets us into something he or she is going to get us out of it logically. The Rosie Project was so clever in the way it approached this relationship.
Don Tillman (our protagonist) tells us his story from the first person perspective. Now, I am not enthralled by this particular narrative device. When done well, a book turns into a masterpiece but SO many people (myself included! I’ve written a LOT of very bad first person perspective stories) do it poorly (I’m looking at you all writers of tweenage romance supernatural love triangle stories! You know who you are!). Simsion’s whole shtick (if that is the right word?) hinges on that first-person perspective and it is amazing. You see, Don has Asperger’s Syndrome. He doesn’t pick up on social cues and as a result has very few friendships. This leads him to the Wife Project in which he calculates variables of a perfect partner for himself and sets about trying to find a wife. Clearly, this goes as well as you’d suppose. While Don tells us about his dates and his life in general he stumbles onto another project, the Rosie Project. Rosie is a mess. She’s looking for her biological father because she’s convinced that the man who her mother claimed is her father, in fact, cannot be. This is where Don comes in. He’s a geneticist and can assist her in conducting paternity tests. There are several candidates and Don and Rosie go about tracking them all down and attempting to retrieve samples to test. Again, this goes as well as you’d suppose it goes.
Aside from being quite funny, this book questions connections and relationships. How do humans truly interact with each other? What level of artifice do people justify in order to peacefully co-exist? How do people with differences conduct themselves in a world where they are the minority? This is all done through humor and through the lens of Don’s Asperger’s Syndrome. There are an assortment of additional characters that round out the narrative and give color to Don’s life, but he is our primary focus. I found myself actually cringing in my chair as I read some of his exploits. Not because they were too silly or unbelievable but they are all to relatable and familiar. When I was in college I was friends with a guy we’ll call Dan (that being his name). Dan was goofy and fun, but he didn’t get it. I mean, he REALLY didn’t get it. He would say the most inappropriate and off-the-wall things at the most inopportune times. My roommates and I had perfected the particular “DA-AN!” we’d have to say when things got too far out of line. Initially, I felt he was just clueless, or outlandish, or quirky…. but then he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder and it all made perfect sense. His inability to conform to social norms was just his brain functioning in a very different way. In the book, when I was reading about Don, I was thinking about Dan. Both were kind of in that same place of wanting to make deeper connections but being unable to give the type of responses that are necessary in a romantic relationship.
This book was fun. It was a quick read. I feel like a book club could read this and have a great discussion about the themes that aren’t so overt, but I also feel you could take this to the beach with you in the summertime for light entertainment. It is a bit of a catch all, and isn’t that refreshing in fiction? I’d recommend this one.
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