The Rosie Project

Don Tillman is a thirty-nine-year-old genetics professor in Melbourne who has never had a second date. Being a scientist, he approaches the problem as one: the Wife Project, a detailed questionnaire designed to screen out smokers, drinkers, the unpunctual and anyone else unsuitable. Then Rosie walks into his office, failing nearly every criterion, with a project of her own. She wants to find her biological father, and a geneticist could be very useful.

The novel is told in Don's voice, precise, literal and entirely earnest, and much of the comedy lives in the gap between what he notices and what he misses. Beneath the laughs is a tender story about routine, difference and the slow work of letting someone in. It is a warm, funny romance for anyone who likes their love stories clever and a little unconventional.