Book: 6/52
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
My Rating: 5/5
So I continue to read 5/5 books this year, and this one was no exception on that front :). I landed on this book in our little library in Pune, as I had read quite a few glowing reviews on the same in the past. I must say that I loved this book big time, and the story was so amazing that I wished it never ended. I am definitely going to put Graeme somewhere between my love for PG Wodehouse and Frederik Backman, his main character Don Tillman, an Aussie, is no less than Jeeves, Wooster and much-loved and adored Ove for that matter. Don is 40ish, PhD in Genetics and is not only a scientist but also a Prof of repute in a notable university, and on top of all that, he is an Aspie, as he calls all Asperger’s syndrome people with love. So that makes him a superhuman of sorts with a very set and organised life, but the way Graeme has written the story and character, it is not only hilarious but also made me emotional too. Now that's another thing that Don doesn’t feel emotional at all, and how? I can’t explain, but one has to read to know. So the story goes forward when one fine day he decides that he needs to get a life partner, and he starts “The Wife Project” with his best friend Gene, who is not only his colleague but a father figure too, with his much-loved wife Claudia, who is a Psychologist, so you get the hang of the people he goes around with. Unfortunately, his wife's project doesn’t do much help, but Gene finds a woman called Rosie, who is a total misfit, but then with Rosie, Don starts another project called “The Father Project” with her to find her biological father. And with many twists and turns, after intercontinental travel in search of her father, will they get him, or will they cook up their own story? is the rest of the novel.
The book is hardly 300+ pages, and I found it completely compulsively readable, totally unputdownable, thrilling, intruiguing and so mushy, so romantic. I wish and pray they never make a movie on this one, as Tom Hanks is too old and Jacob Elordi is too tall to play Don’s character and won't look like a PhD guy, either, and I could not imagine any other actor playing that amazing character as of now. I am amazed by the way Graeme has written such a beautiful story around Science and technical terms, yet it works wonders with the readers who do not know the field, especially the way it revolves around the University Campus with 50-odd doctors (PhDs included) being examined for the father project, most hilariously. And the way Don, who is an accomplished cocktail bartender and a licensed server of alcohol, goes through his days alone with such finesse is to die for. I am so much in love with him that it will be very hard for me not to get the rest of the two books in the series at the earliest, hoping and praying that our library has all the parts :). I loved the bookcover too, with a lobster in prime focus, I wish I could eat a lobster every Tuesday just like Don did all his life till he met Rosie.
Do let me know if you have read the Rosie Project and loved it too. Also, let me know who you would love to see as Don and Rosie in the movie, if one ever gets made. I will pick Emily Blunt for sure as Rosie.
