The Rosie Effect
Praise for THE ROSIE PROJECT
‘The hero of
The Rosie Project
is one of those rare fictional characters destined to take up residence in the popular consciousness. Don Tillman…seems set to join Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones as a creation with a life beyond the final chapter.’
Guardian
‘An extraordinarily clever, funny, and moving book about being comfortable with who you are and what you’re good at…This is one of the most profound novels I’ve read in a long time.’ Bill Gates in
The Gates Notes
‘Extremely loud and incredibly long applause.’
Age
‘Charming, funny and heartwarming, a gem of a book.’ Marian Keyes
‘Crackling with wit and boasting an almost perfectly calibrated heartbreak-to-romance ratio, Graeme Simsion’s delightful debut,
The Rosie Project
, joins ranks with the best romantic comedies of our age.’
Globe and Mail
‘
The Rosie Project
is an upbeat, quirky, impertinent gem of a read…may well be the world’s first rigorously evidence-based romantic comedy.’ Chris Cleave
‘Squelch your inner cynic: the hype is justified. Graeme Simsion has written a genuinely funny novel.’
Washington Post
‘One of the most endearing, charming and fascinating literary characters I have met in a long time.’
The Times
‘Although there are many laughs to be found in this marvellous novel,
The Rosie Project
is a serious reflection on our need for companionship and identity.’ John Boyne
‘I couldn’t put this book down. It’s one of the most quirky and endearing romances I’ve ever read.’ Sophie Kinsella
‘A sparkling, laugh-out-loud novel.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘This charming, warm-hearted escapade, which celebrates the havoc—and pleasure—emotions can unleash, offers amusement aplenty. Sharp dialogue, terrific pacing, physical hijinks, slapstick, a couple to root for, and more twists than a pack of Twizzlers.’
NPR
‘…the overall effect of
The Rosie Project
will be, if anything, to increase genuine understanding of Aspergers (or, as it will soon be called, the autistic spectrum) and to refute some common myths. It’s great fun, too.’
Australian Book Review
‘Don Tillman helps us believe in possibility, makes us proud to be human beings, and the bonus is this: he keeps us laughing like hell.’ Matthew Quick
‘Laugh-out-loud funny, poignant and so ingenious and compelling you feel as if you want to jump into the world of the novel and join in.’
Australian Women’s Weekly
‘Happily, Simsion doesn’t give Don an unbelievable emotional makeover. Our man just learns to live by a more complicated algorithm.’
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Graeme Simsion is a Melbourne-based writer.
The Rosie Project
, his bestselling first novel, was named Book of the Year at the 2014 Australian Book Industry Awards.
The Rosie Project
has sold more than a million copies worldwide and is being published in thirty-eight languages.
Book club notes, author videos and fun compatibility and character tests for
The Rosie Project
are available at
therosieproject.com.au
.
The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
Copyright © Graeme Simsion 2014
The moral right of Graeme Simsion to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published by The Text Publishing Company 2014
Cover design by W. H. Chong
Page design by Imogen Stubbs
Typeset by J&M Typesetting
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Simsion, Graeme C.
Title: The Rosie Effect / by Graeme Simsion.
ISBN: 9781922182104 (paperback)
9781925095104 (ebook)
Subjects: Marriage—Fiction.
Australian fiction—21st century.
Love stories.
Dewey Number: A823.4
To Anne
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgements
Orange juice was not scheduled for Fridays. Although Rosie and I had abandoned the Standardised Meal System, resulting in an improvement in ‘spontaneity’ at the expense of shopping time, food inventory and wastage, we had agreed that each week should include three alcohol-free days. Without formal scheduling, this target proved difficult to achieve, as I had predicted. Rosie eventually saw the logic of my solution.
Fridays and Saturdays were obvious days on which to consume alcohol. Neither of us had classes on the weekend. We could sleep late and possibly have sex.
Sex was absolutely
not
allowed to be scheduled, at least not by explicit discussion, but I had become familiar with the sequence of events likely to precipitate it: a blueberry muffin from Blue Sky Bakery, a triple shot of espresso from Otha’s,
removal of my shirt, and my impersonation of Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
. I had learned not to do all four in the same sequence on every occasion, as my intention would then be obvious. To provide an element of unpredictability, I settled on tossing a coin twice to select a component of the routine to delete.
I had placed a bottle of Elk Cove pinot gris in the refrigerator to accompany the divers’ scallops purchased that morning at Chelsea Market, but when I returned after retrieving our laundry from the basement, there were two glasses of orange juice on the table. Orange juice was not compatible with the wine. Drinking it first would desensitise our tastebuds to the slight residual sugar that was a feature of the pinot gris, thus creating an impression of sourness. Waiting until after we had finished the wine would also be unacceptable. Orange juice deteriorates rapidly—hence the emphasis placed by breakfast establishments on ‘freshly squeezed’.
Rosie was in the bedroom, so not immediately available for discussion. In our apartment, there were nine possible combinations of locations for two people, of which six involved us being in different rooms. In our ideal apartment, as jointly specified prior to our arrival in New York, there would have been thirty-six possible combinations, arising from the bedroom, two studies, two bathrooms and a living-room-kitchen. This reference apartment would have been located in Manhattan, close to the 1 or A-Train for access to Columbia University medical school, with water views and a balcony or rooftop barbecue area.
As our income consisted of one academic’s salary,
supplemented by two part-time cocktail-making jobs but reduced by Rosie’s tuition fees, some compromise was required, and our apartment offered none of the specified features. We had given excessive weight to the Williamsburg location because our friends Isaac and Judy Esler lived there and had recommended it. There was no logical reason why a (then) forty-year-old professor of genetics and a thirty-year-old postgraduate medical student would be suited to the same neighbourhood as a fifty-four-year-old psychiatrist and a fifty-two-year-old potter who had acquired their dwelling before prices escalated. The rent was high and the apartment had a number of faults that the management was reluctant to rectify. Currently the air conditioning was failing to compensate for the exterior temperature of thirty-four degrees Celsius, which was within the expected range for Brooklyn in late June.
The reduction in room numbers, combined with marriage, meant I had been thrown into closer sustained proximity with another human being than ever before. Rosie’s physical presence was a hugely positive outcome of the Wife Project, but after ten months and ten days of marriage I was still adapting to being a component of a couple. I sometimes spent longer in the bathroom than was strictly necessary.
I checked the date on my phone—definitely Friday, 21 June. This was a better outcome than the scenario in which my brain had developed a fault that caused it to identify days incorrectly. But it confirmed a violation of the alcohol protocol.
My reflections were interrupted by Rosie emerging from
the bedroom wearing only a towel. This was my favourite costume, assuming ‘no costume’ did not qualify as a costume. Once again, I was struck by her extraordinary beauty and inexplicable decision to select me as her partner. And, as always, that thought was followed by an unwanted emotion: an intense moment of fear that she would one day realise her error.
‘What’s cooking?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. Cooking has not commenced. I’m in the ingredient-assembly phase.’
She laughed, in the tone that indicated I had misinterpreted her question. Of course, the question would not have been required at all had the Standardised Meal System been in place. I provided the information that I guessed Rosie was seeking.