The Rosie Project -- The Perfect Summer Read
There is usually a hot summer song by Rihanna or Katy Perry or some random lucky band that seems to hit it just right — that is playing on the radio every summer. And it seems like there is a book you see more frequently on the beaches. The same book that appeared in women’s magazines in the spring that some savvy publicist has promised will make your vacation that much more fun and boy, you’d better read this sucker or your life will not be complete.
Take it from someone who is emphatically not a publicist but rather a slightly jealous writer who wishes she’d written this book because it’s so smart and funny and delightful that I read it in two days. Had I not needed to drive back across the entire state of Washington after dropping my daughter at camp I would have stayed in Pullman and finished the book.
The Rosie Project is the kind of book that begins in the right place, ends leaving you feeling totally charmed and wishing there was just one more chapter. And you tell all your friends to read it.
Don Tillaman is a genetics professor who seems to have much in common with the Asperger syndrome patients he studies: few social skills, trouble relating to other people’s emotions, an obsessive need for order and rules and a single-minded ability to focus for long periods of time. His brain in a sponge. Lonely and forty, he approaches finding a wife with the methodiocal logic he applies to every area of his life: he creates a questionaire for the perfect mate. Much like the romantic comedies Dr. Tillman studies for clues into the social norms of romance and dating, a free spirited cocktail waitress named Rosie comes into his life. He mistakes her for someone who has filled out his questionaire and ends up helping her, using his skills as a genticist, to help her find the identity of her father, whom she has never met.
Seeing the world through Don Tillman’s eyes is to be a tourist in another world in the company of an endearing, heartbreakingly earnest man who is often perplexed by his fellow humans. He stumbles into what he belatedly realizes is love with Rosie, opening his constrained life to the messy, confusing and often painful world of love.
The journey is funny, heart-warming and utterly delightful. What fun to be re-living the plots of the world’s greatest romantic comedies while reading a book that follows their formulas with great success.
We’re in the middle of summer. Do yourself a favor and pack this book along with your sunscreen and your flipflops. You won’t regret it.
