The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion

What happened on my twenty-first birthday was that I decided that I needed to take a new direction in my life, because any change was better than staying in the pit of depression. I actually visualised it as a pit.

Gene had once told me a religious joke when I questioned the morality of his behaviour. Jesus addresses the angry mob who are stoning a prostitute: ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ A stone flies through the air and hits the woman. Jesus turns around and says, ‘Sometimes you really piss me off, Mother.’ I could no longer be equated with the Virgin Mary. I had been corrupted. I was like everyone else. My stone-casting credibility had been significantly compromised.

1. I need not be visibly odd. I could engage in the protocols that others followed and move undetected among them. And how could I be sure that other people were not doing the same—playing the game to be accepted but suspecting all the time that they were different?