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The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)

Graeme Simsion

Discussion: . Week 2: Romance

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. Week 2: Romance

* Week 2: Introduction
By Jessica · 43 posts · 618 views

last updated Feb 03, 2015 01:13PM

* Week 2: Progress Post
By Jessica · 54 posts · 221 views

last updated Dec 30, 2015 12:26PM

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What Members Thought

Jan 05, 2016 Valerie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, romance, foreign, humor, prize-winner, fiction, adult-fiction, womens, adult

From the first sentence the reader is aware that Don Tilman is a different kind of guy. He is structured, smart, intellectual, and rigid. He likes rigid. He does not bend the rules...his rules, if he can possibly help it. This keeps him comfortable, but it keeps him on the edge of being fired, keeps him from developing a relationship, and pushes him to develop The Wife Project. His one and only male friend, and by default...best friend, sends him a candidate for his wife project. However, Rosie ...more

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Sep 30, 2015 Sim Carter rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-made-into-movies, film, young-adult, contemporary-fiction, screen-adaptations, made-me-laugh

I've never met a romantic hero quite like Don Tillman, the leading man in The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. While the titular Rosie is a familiar figure; beautiful, slightly to the left of the straight and narrow, a charming rule breaker, the oh-so-quirky Don is something else. He's the revenge of the nerds squared. Actually he's a genetic research scientist who's probably the first ever truly Autistic protagonist of a romantic comedy. I can't wait to see the movie version! Last week we learn I've never met a romantic hero quite like Don Tillman, the leading man in The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. While the titular Rosie is a familiar figure; beautiful, slightly to the left of the straight and narrow, a charming rule breaker, the oh-so-quirky Don is something else. He's the revenge of the nerds squared. Actually he's a genetic research scientist who's probably the first ever truly Autistic protagonist of a romantic comedy. I can't wait to see the movie version! Last week we learned The Rosie Project is headed to the screen via a script by rom-com screenwriters extraordinaire Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, with Jennifer Lawrence set to star. The producers are looking at Richard Linklater to direct!

While the casting of Jennifer Lawrence as Rosie is brilliant — for those of you following along, in the past Jennifer Lawrence has been an anathema to me but I have to say, the more I read this book, the more I realized just how perfect J-Law was for the part —who to cast as Don, the awkward, nerdy, socially clueless but brilliant 39 year old science guy who, with the right haircut and suit, just happens to look like Cary Grant?

As Don puts it
"I am thirty-nine years old, tall, fit, and intelligent with a relatively high status and above average income as an associate professor. Logically, I should be attractive to a wide range of women. In the animal kingdom, I would succeed in reproducing.
However, there is something about me that women find unappealing. I have never found it easy to make friends, and it seems the deficiencies that caused this problem have also affected my attempts at romantic relationships."
After several dating disasters, Don decides to search for a wife via a lengthy questionnaire that factors all the potential foibles out. While doing so he encounters Rosie and while she fails his questionnaire he finds himself drawn into helping Rosie find her biological father. Don probably falls in the Asperger's quadrant of the Austism spectrum: he's professorial, adept in his own field, rigid, absolutely clueless about society's expectations and oblivious to the social cues of others. He's not quite oblivious to the oddness of his behavioral ticks, things like scheduling his meals so that he eats the same thing for supper every Monday, week after week, but at the same time he sees no need to change things up. It's so much easier, he reasons, to decide on what to eat once and for all, and leave his brain available for all the other thinking and activities that need to be done. Autism and spontaneity rarely equate.

I fell in love with him instantly.

When my son was growing up, his best neighborhood friends from aged five through eleven, when we moved away, were Katie and her older, autistic brother Chris, who lived next door. Sometimes they'd all take our beagle Charlie for a walk. Charlie, a rambunctious puppy, would have the kids racing after him, struggling just to keep up as he bounded off on the trail of a particularly good squirrel scent. Taking Charlie for a walk was a 'walk' in name only. I still laugh when I think of Chris, stopping on the sidewalk, his face red and frustrated. "Hey! There's a reason you call it a walk, you know!" Our friend Chris has grown up now. Chris has a girlfriend and a budding career as an actor and comedian.

I doubt Chris would have patience for the book in which Tillman is conducting a search for the perfect partner via a long, in-depth questionnaire which cigarette-smoking, alchohol-imbibing Rosie fails but I think he would relate to the methodical way Don goes about trying to find a partner. I'm sure he'd recognize and respect the way Don tries to change and fit more closely into being what the world expects him to be but at the end of the day, Don, and my friend Chris, know who they are. They may be the odd men out I love how this book shows us that for those who take the extra time to get to know them and look past—or even learn to appreciate— their quirks, they'll often find a funny, smart as hell, friend inside.

As Don Tillman puts it: An inability (or reduced ability) to empathize is not the same as an inability to love. And I really loved Don Tillman.

Have you read Graeme Simsion's book? Who would you cast as Don Tillman? ...more

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Feb 09, 2017 ktouton rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: chick-lit

I owned this book. It has been on my "to read" list for a while. I recently joined an online book club and this was the book for February 2017.

Love and Aspergers is an interesting combination. I have spent 30 years working with engineers and IT people. I have worked with some people on the spectrum. In some ways this book hit home.

As a whole, love stories aren't my things. My reviews is probably tainted by that fact.

The book was ok, a little slow going in places. It does have some adult conten ...more

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Dec 16, 2014 Jodez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Not my usual genre, but still an enjoyable read. Looking forward to the sequel.

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Jul 03, 2019 Hannah Norman rated it really liked it

I have mixed feelings on this book. The story was adorable and I love that someone who is on the spectrum was the un-ironic star of the novel. I do fear that a few times I was unhappy with the way Simsion presented Don. He pushed his character a bit too much at times.

I will be reading the next novel.

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Jan 11, 2016 Mandy rated it liked it

Shelves: 2016-challenge

Week 2 - set in a different country

Audiobook. There was a lot of hype for this book in my reading group, and don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it, but I wasn't blown away. This isn't a book that will stay with me, but it was fun. ...more

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