The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Narrated by Dan O’Grady

I heard a lot of buzz about The Rosie Project – it is an Australian book so I heard the local buzz first and now that it has been released in the US, it’s being renewed. When it came up for review at AudioGals, I put my hand up to continue the patriotic fervor.

Don Tillman is an associate professor in genetics at a Melbourne university. The book is told entirely from his first person perspective and I always think that such stories translate extremely well to audio. He is clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum (possibly Aspberger’s Syndrome) but he has never been diagnosed with that condition and he doesn’t think of himself that way – rather, he believes he is “wired differently”. He certainly is. He is socially inept, most comfortable in strict and rigid routines, and sees things mostly in black and white. The book demonstrates this in a myriad of ways, some of them hilarious and some of them more poignant. The first clue I had was his scheduling of 94 minutes in his evening to clean his bathroom. A change to his schedule throws him into chaos.

Don is mostly a loner, having only a few friends. He is 39 and has decided that he would like a life partner. In his typical style, he decides to create a questionnaire (16 double-sided pages of questions!) to try and identify the perfect woman for him. He does not believe he can feel romantic love, so he proceeds based on compatibility. He is looking for a highly intelligent, non-smoker, who is never late, good at maths, and is not a vegetarian (and that’s just the start). Don calls it “the Wife Project”. Around the same time, Don meets Rosie Jarman. Rosie’s mother had drunken sex with a member of her graduating class some 30 or so years before but the identity of her father is unknown. Don decides to help Rosie identify her father via DNA testing – “the Father Project”.

Precisely why Don makes this decision isn’t entirely clear. Rosie is not a candidate for the Wife Project because she is smoker, a barmaid, is habitually late, dislikes maths, and is “basically a vegetarian”. Don doesn’t need her to fill out the questionnaire to know that she is totally unsuitable. However, for some reason, he wishes to spend time with her and the Father Project provides a reason to do so. In retrospect, I think it may have been just Don’s scientific bent which interested him at first in the Father Project but it is not explicit in the book.

There are many laugh-out-loud moments in the story – at one point Don decides to learn sex positions from a book and uses a skeleton he’s borrowed from another department to assist him – two bodies are needed to properly practice. And then there was “the Jacket Incident” which also made me chuckle.

Obviously, over the course of the Father Project, Don falls for Rosie and she for him. It is a romance so there is a HEA but getting there pushes Don out of his comfort zone in just about every area.

I was pleased that the narrator was Australian. While I haven’t heard any Dan O’Grady narrations before (and a quick internet search indicates this is his debut as indeed it is the author’s), I did get a chance to listen to a quick sample before committing to the review. I have two complaints. First, there were times when Mr. O’Grady tripped over his words. Initially I wondered if this was an affectation for Don’s character, but on reflection, I felt it was just that the narrator got tongue tied from time to time. Don as a character wouldn’t, I thought, trip over words such as psychiatrist (and there was no mention in the text of any speech impediment). I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I could always understand what was being said, so it ought not be a big deal. On the other, my only medium for taking this book in was via my ears and if the words were not clear, well, that is a big deal.

The other issue had to do with his female voices. I was cringing after the first one – she sounded like a heavy smoker and drinker, about sixty years in age (and possibly male), and with an extremely broad Australian accent. Which would have been fine if the character was described in the text in similar terms. She was not. She was a professional woman in her early thirties and definitely female. At about this point, I began to worry.

Fortunately, the later females in the story were more palatable although they did not sound remotely female. They were merely slightly (very slightly) softer versions of the narrator’s natural accent. There were times when it was difficult to differentiate between Rosie and Don in conversation. The story however was enough to draw me on and, I did become used to the voices and was able to immerse myself in the story. Because of that immersion, I ended up grading the narration a B- even though I felt it might be heading toward C- territory at the start.

Mr. O’Grady did nail the humor and the deadpan of Don’s “weirdness”. Much of the humor is derived from the fact that we, as listeners, know the social rules and therefore understand the subtext Don misses. A very little of it is mean – but most of it, I found to be good-hearted and fond. Don himself, having recognized that he will often be embarrassed by his difference, has taken it upon himself to be the “class clown” and so, even invites it on occasion. What gives the story its humor also gives it its pathos and I found there to be a good balance in the story. I liked Don and, being in his head, I understood him and the way he looked at life. His loyalty, once given, is rock solid and permanent.

Don has few friends. Gene, a fellow professor and his long-suffering wife Claudia (Gene is a manwhore) are his only two friends at the start of the book. In pondering why Rosie, I decided two things – first, like Gene and Claudia, Rosie basically accepts him for who he is (albeit that the Standardized Meal System really has to go) and the other is proximity. Most people reject Don very quickly. He only feels comfortable with those who stick around a bit and give him a chance. With Rosie, that comfort and acceptance was also combined with sexual attraction (which Don acknowledges is not at all rational). Rosie is a woman of hidden depths and, as Don spends time with her, he finds himself wanting to understand her social cues more than anything.

While I did have some problems with aspects of the narration, I thought the book was charming and funny. And, once I got over the “female voice hurdle”, I was able to settle in to the narration and enjoy the audiobook. At first, I would have said – great book but read it in print. Now, I’d recommend the audiobook, with the qualification that the female voices aren’t stellar. Still, Mr. O’Grady delivers Don, the book’s central character, with insight and humor and compassion and, for that alone, I think it’s worth it.

Kaetrin

Narration:  B-

Book Content:  A-

Steam Factor:  You can play it out loud (there is some swearing but that’s it)

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Contemporary Romantic Comedy

Publisher:  Simon and Schuster

The Rosie Project was provided to AudioGals for review by Simon and Schuster.