The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion
Published: Penguin Books 2013
Format: Audio
Narrator: Dan O'Grady
Length:7 hours 30 minutes
Genre: Romantic comedy
Source: Own audiobook

Meet Don. Don is a genetics professor who just might be somewhere on the autistic spectrum. He looks a little like Gregory Peck and is getting married. He just doesn’t know who to yet. But he has designed a very detailed questionnaire to help him find the perfect woman. And it’s definitely not Rosie. Absolutely, completely, definitely not. Rosie, meanwhile, isn’t looking for love; she’s looking for her biological father. Sometimes, though, you don’t find love: love finds you...

My thoughts
This book was every bit as good as many readers before me have said.  I really enjoyed it.  I listened to the audio, often while I was out walking.  I caught myself either laughing out loud with surprise or just grinning.  It was so entertaining.  New Zealand born, Australian raised author Graeme Simsion has done a fabulous job.

Don thinks differently to most people - he lives a very ordered life, he struggles to understand emotions and is a very factual thinker.  Whenever he describes a person he meets, its very factual and always carries certain statistics.  Because he is like he is, he has often been teased and ridiculed in his life.  Yet his way of thinking and the skills he has, makes him a very marketable person on a variety of fronts.

As a genetics expert, he sets out to help Rosie find her actual father, her mother is dead and she regards her dad as her step-dad.  The extreme lengths that they go to provides much of the humour. Don also believes in telling it like it is, and his social relationships are few.  However he is capable of them as evidenced especially by Daphne, a fellow professor and his wife.

Rosie is everything Don is not looking for in a wife, but as their relationship develops, so too does Don.  I truly wasn't sure how this book was going to end, I loved the way it did, but could have accepted a different one if I had to.

It is (for me) difficult to understand people who are different, and so I welcome any book that helps me to see 'inside' a difference, so that I become more comfortable, understanding and accepting of the person who is an embodiment of that difference.  This book is superb.

Dan O"Grady  narrated The Rosie Project really well.  He spoke as I would imagine Don would speak.  It was so believable it was as if Don was speaking.  At first I was a little annoyed at his speaking of the women parts, a slight variation and that was all.  However after awhile I  settled down.  The fact that it was in the 1st person and Don was telling the story sort of suited the narration.  I don't often listen to men narrating because of the way they narrate women's voices.  I have to say it was okay in this book.  If you haven't read this book I highly recommend you listen to the audio version.