It's potentially a major advantage," he tells his audience at the heart of The Rosie Project lies the belief that we all behave according to our own "variant", and what passes for normal can cause as many problems as any named condition. Simsion subtly shows how the script Rosie's written for her own life blinkers her just as effectively as does Don's inability to read social cues.ĭon doesn't regard himself as autistic: he lectures on Asperger's syndrome but fails to link its salient features with his own. "The best I had been able to think of was to construct a ring with a spike that would draw blood when we shook hands, but Rosie considered this socially infeasible." I didn't take to moody, self-absorbed Rosie, but I'm not sure we're meant to.
Don has the know-how and the lab equipment together they collect DNA samples from a range of suspects. Rosie wants to trace her biological father. How will this unlikely leading man, who shops, eats and socialises according to a rigid set of self-imposed rules, work his way towards happiness with emotional, volatile, utterly unautistic Rosie? Clearly, to the reader familiar with the romcom format, she's the one, but as Don himself observes: "Humans often fail to see what is close to them and obvious to others." Misunderstandings and slapstick setpieces abound, as when the virginal Don works his way through a manual of sexual positions with the aid of the laboratory skeleton, to the consternation of the dean. "I believe I can eliminate most women in less than forty seconds."Įnter Rosie, who ticks none of the right boxes. He devises a questionnaire ("Question 35: Do you eat kidneys? Correct answer is c) occasionally") to track down the perfect partner.
Finding a wife is like looking for a bone-marrow donor, Don decides. "Logically, I should be attractive to a wide range of women," he states, but on a series of disastrous dates, logic fails to do its stuff.
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