The Rosie Project

 

 

The feel-good novel of 2013, The Rosie Project is a classic screwball romance.

Rights sold into more than thirty countries.

Don Tillman is getting married. He just doesn’t know who to yet.

But he has designed the Wife Project, using a sixteen-page questionnaire to help him 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 also fiery and intelligent and beautiful. And on a quest of her own to find her biological father—a search that Don, a professor of genetics, might just be able to help her with.

The Wife Project teaches Don some unexpected things. Why earlobe length is an inadequate predictor of sexual attraction. Why quick-dry clothes aren’t appropriate attire in New York. Why he’s never been on a second date. And why, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love: love finds you.

‘…the overall effect of The Rosie Project will be, if anything, to increase genuine understanding of Aspergers (or, as it will soon be called, the autistic spectrum) and to refute some common myths. It’s great fun, too.’ Jo Case, Australian Book Review

‘If you, like Don Tillman, would like like to try lobster on Tuesday, click here for a great recipe from Ezard: Crayfish, Mango and Avocado Salad with Wasabi Flying Fish Roe, Soy and Bonito Dressing and Crispy Seaweed Salad.

Watch and listen to Graeme reading from The Rosie Project at UK World Book Night, 2013.

Interviews and reviews
Booktopia interview
Readings Shearer’s Bookshop interview
Joan’s Pick (Whitcoulls NZ)
The Small Picture Podcasts
ABC Radio Perth review
Boomerang Books profile
The Wheeler Centre Q&A
Radio NZ interview
Australian Writers' Centre podcast
BBC Radio 2 interview

Praise for Graeme Simsion and The Rosie Project:

‘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