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Published: 30th January 2013

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Booktopia Comments

Booktopia Buzz Editor Caroline Baum: When rights to a debut novel are sold in more than thirty countries, you know a book is generating serious buzz. I am glad to say that this feel-good debut delivers what the hype promises. It's as light as perfectly baked scone, narrowly avoiding saccharine pitfalls, achieving just the right combo of airiness and substance for the perfect rom-com recipe.

From the moment we meet Don Tillman, professor of genetics, it's clear we've got a special case on our hands. He's got that awkward slightly aspergers-ish personality that has become so popular with writers of late. Think of him as the grown up version of the boy in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Boy in the Night Time. His very set habits include eating lobster on Tuesdays and wearing daggy quick dry clothes to save time.

Don's problem (he tells us in his matter of fact deadpan, literal tone) is that he has never been on a second date. With his mathematical brain, he devises a scientifically researched questionnaire to find the perfect partner. Smokers, drinkers and latecomers need not apply.

Except that Rosie is all of these things and more. So how to explain the attraction he feels for a woman who ticks none of the right boxes but presents Don with a compelling scientific quest of her own to find her biological father that presents him with thrillingly unpredictable scenarios?

Irresistibly charming, genuinely funny and cleverly plotted this is intelligent romance for grown ups whose arteries have not hardened with cynicism.

Book Description

The feel-good hit of 2013, The Rosie Project is a classic screwball romance. Simsion's book has been sold to 30 different countries and advances have well exceeded $1 million.

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. Then a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionnaire—a sixteen-page, scientifically researched document—to find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver.

Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is strangely beguiling, fiery and intelligent. And she is also on a quest of her own. She’s looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might just be able to help her with—even if he does wear quick-dry clothes and eat lobster every single Tuesday night.

About the Author

Graeme Simsion was born in 1956. He is an IT consultant and data analyst with an international reputation. He has taught at four Australian universities and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Melbourne University. He is a founder of Pinot Now, a wine importer and distributor, and is married to Anne, a professor of psychiatry who writes erotic fiction. They have two children.

In 2007, Graeme completed his PhD in information systems and enrolled in the professional screenwriting course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He has made a number of short films and his screenplay, The Rosie Project, won the Australian Writers Guild / Inception Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script in 2010. While waiting for The Rosie Project to be produced, he turned it into a novel which in June 2012 won the Victorian Premier’s award for an unpublished fiction manuscript.

Readers of The Rosie Project will know that Graeme Simsion has a first-class sense of humour. At professional conferences he has given addresses from on top of a ladder, dressed as a duck, and he once engaged a group of spellbound chartered accountants in community singing.

'Funny and heartwarming, a gem of a book.' -- Marian Keyes 'Although there are many laughs to be found in this marvellous novel, The Rosie Project is a serious reflection on our need for companionship and identity. Don Tillman is as awkward and confusing a narrator as he is lovable and charming.' -- John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 'The Rosie Project is 1930s screwball comedy updated for 2013. Hepburn and Grant in Bringing Up Baby, or Rosalind Russell and Grat in His Girl Friday have the exact same pitch, intelligence, wit and farce with a love story at the centre of it all. Madcap indeed, but like those films The Rosie Project underscored with writing meticulously judged. Simsion is in his 50s and it is astonishing that this is his first novel, although he has said he worked on it for years. It shows. This is hand-polished writing. The novel has already been sold internationally into more than 30 countries, a success before it was published here. Extremely loud and incredibly long applause.' Age/SMH/Canberra Times/Brisbane Times 'I absolutely loved The Rosie Project-original and clever, and perfectly written. The world is going to fall in love with Don and Rosie and I can't wait for that to happen.' -- Jill Mansell, author of To the Moon and Back 'Graeme Simsion has created an unforgettable and charming character unique in fiction. Don Tillman is on a quirky, often hilarious, always sincere quest to logically discover what is ultimately illogical-love. Written in a superbly pitch-perfect voice, The Rosie Project had me cheering for Don on every page. I'm madly in love with this book! Trust me, you will be, too.' -- Lisa Genova, bestselling author of Still Alice and Left Neglected 'One of the quirkiest, most adorable novels I've come across...This is a fresh, funny story, written with verve and great timing...I loved The Rosie Project. It's an entertaining read from start to finish, thoughtful and fun, very different and utterly charming - a brilliant first novel from a mature, clever writer. If you ask me, we should lay claim to Graeme Simsion and let Australia keep Russell Crowe.' NZ Herald on Sunday 'What an endearing, funny book...a quirky love story about belonging with poignant undertones on the need for us all to be more tolerant of those with differences. A must read for 2013.' Courier Mail/Daily Telegraph 'The charm of this story is Simsion's affectionate depiction of his strange, flawed, infuriating, logical and always amusing protagonist.' Weekend Australian 'Don Tillman helps us believe in possibility, makes us proud to be human beings, and the bonus is this: he keeps us laughing like hell. I'd love to have a beer with the humane and hilarious Graeme Simsion'. -- Matthew Quick, New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Lining Playbook 'As you start reading this extraordinary work, there's no doubt that unlikely hero Don Tillman is about to take the world if not by storm, certainly by rational argument...Laugh-out loud funny, poignant and so ingenious and compelling you feel as if you want to jump into the world of the novel and join in. In Don's confessionals, there are echoes of Bridget Jones, writer Nick Hornby and Amelie in the French movie hit...but essentially Don Tillman is utterly and beautifully unique and, be warned, you will fall in love with him.' Australian Women's Weekly 'Charming and delightful, The Rosie Project kept me riveted long into the night. I was so enamoured of it that I read it in a single, marathon sitting.' -- Ayelet Waldman, author of Red Hook Road 'Graeme Simsion has created perhaps the first thoroughly comic autistic hero...This good-hearted, pacy, thoroughly enjoyable novel takes a significant step towards showing that all human variants are a potential source of life-affirming comedy.' Guardian 'Funny, endearing, and pure, wonderful escapism, this debut tells the story of the logical Professor Don Tillman and his unscientific search for a wife.' Independent 'The Rosie Project is a swift, amusing read, Don's mixture of absolute directness and emotional incomprehension providing lots of laughs.' London Evening Standard '...Simsion has fashioned a very funny and touching love story, which provides a sympathetic insight into a much-misunderstood condition, and even prompts the non-Asperger's reader to question a lot of what is viewed as "everyday logic"...More than that, he has provided a clever satire on modern, internet-led dating, demonstrating that finding the right partner is not about the ticking of boxes, but something else: chancing upon something flawed and intangible and great, which burns like a mysterious fire.' Sunday Express '[Don Tillman is] one of the most endearing, charming and fascinating literary characters I have met in a long time.' The Times 'Imagine the literary equivalent of one of those lamps prescribed for sufferers of seasonal affective disorder-a book that found the crack in our seemingly interminable winter to let laughter and light flood in.' Sunday Times UK

ISBN: 9781922079770
ISBN-10: 1922079774
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 304
Published: 30th January 2013
Dimensions (cm): 23.4 x 15.3