The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project is a novel by the Australian writer Graeme Simsion, first published in Australia in 2013. It has been sold in more than forty countries, and it was named book of the year by the Australian Book Industry Association in 2014.

Don Tillman is a geneticist, organised, systematic and not at all at ease with the improvisation that courtship requires. His solution is the Wife Project, a questionnaire of the sort he would use for a study, and the plan is to filter candidates until one of them matches his criteria.

Rosie Jarman is not a candidate: she smokes, she drinks, she is late, and she is thoroughly unsuitable on paper. What she has, however, is a question about her own parentage that a geneticist is unusually well placed to answer, and the two of them begin working on what they call the Father Project instead. The novel maps the progress of that collaboration, in which Don's method and Rosie's impatience are both necessary, and it followed by a sequel, The Rosie Effect.