DON TILLMAN DOESN'T KNOW he has Asperger's syndrome, although his symptoms are obvious to friends and colleagues. He flinches from physical contact and cooks all his meals according to an unvarying schedule; his approach to courtship consists of handing women a detailed questionnaire to test their suitability. It is a convention of romantic comedy that a man's rigidly constrained existence must be disrupted by an impulsive and uninhibited woman, and Graeme Simsion's "Rosie Project," unlike its hero, is resolutely conventional. So along comes Rosie Jarman, "the world's most incompatible woman ... late, vegetarian, disorganized, irrational," with her thick-soled boots and spiky red hair. (An associated convention dictates that this free-spirited heroine must appear to have stepped out of an issue of Sassy from 1994.) Don becomes increasingly involved with Rosie, despite her evident unsuitability for his "Wife Project." (He divides his endeavors into "projects" with capitalized names.) She wants to identify her biological father, and Don, a professor of genetics, offers to help surreptitiously collect and test samples of the candidates' DNA. Forced out of his tightly structured routine by this "Father Project," he finds adventure and, inevitably, love. It's cheering to read about, and root for, a romantic hero with a developmental disorder. "The Rosie Project," Simsion's debut and a best seller in his native Australia, reminds us that people who are neurologically atypical have many of the same concerns as the rest of us: companionship, ethics, alcohol. In fact, Don is a more complex character than he at first appears. What seems to be Asperger's-induced haplessness turns out, at least some of the time, to be a kind of strategic buffoonery. Don's differences are real, but he plays up his eccentricities : he likes to see himself as an independent thinker with too much integrity to make ordinary social and professional compromises. With a light touch, Simsion suggests that Asperger's symptoms can interact, in opaque ways, with human qualities like pride and stubbornness. Don's literal-mindedness can make him an amusing narrator, as when he equably tells us that a date "had chosen a dress with the twin advantages of coolness and overt sexual display." But his insensitivity to the nuances of human speech and behavior sets a limit on the depth of the supporting characters; we see only those traits that are blatant enough to register with Don. (Stronger dialogue would help, as it did in Mark Haddon's "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.") As the DNA investigation unfolds, Rosie's possible fathers blur into a mass of swabbed coffee cups and stolen toothbrushes. "The Rosie Project" is the kind of Panglossian comedy in which everything is foreordained to work out for the best. That's not a genre that can be dismissed entirely - at least not without sacrificing P. G. Wodehouse, which no one should be prepared to do - but it's one that doesn't comfortably accommodate things like autism spectrum disorders. Halfway through the book, Don describes "the awkwardness, approaching revulsion, that I feel when forced into intimate contact with another human." This would seem to be an obstacle to his and Rosie's happiness - a greater obstacle, perhaps, than her low score on his compatibility questionnaire. Simsion waves the problem away in a post hoc last chapter. The ultimate convention of romantic comedy is that love conquers all, but to propose that it can so easily mitigate such a painful condition may be to take convention too far. GABRIEL ROTH is the author of the novel "The Unknowns."

Polished debut fiction, from Australian author Simsion, about a brilliant but emotionally challenged geneticist who develops a questionnaire to screen potential mates but finds love instead. The book won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. "I became aware of applause. It seemed natural. I had been living in the world of romantic comedy and this was the final scene. But it was real." So Don Tillman, our perfectly imperfect narrator and protagonist, tells us. While he makes this observation near the end of the book, it comes as no surprise--this story plays the rom-com card from the first sentence. Don is challenged, almost robotic. He cannot understand social cues, barely feels emotion and can't stand to be touched. Don's best friends are Gene and Claudia, psychologists. Gene brought Don as a postdoc to the prestigious university where he is now an associate professor. Don is a cad, a philanderer who chooses women based on nationality--he aims to sleep with a woman from every country. Claudia is tolerant until she's not. Gene sends Rosie, a graduate student in his department, to Don as a joke, a ringer for the Wife Project. Finding her woefully unsuitable, Don agrees to help the beautiful but fragile Rosie to learn the identity of her biological father. Pursuing this Father Project, Rosie and Don collide like particles in an atom smasher: hilarity, dismay and carbonated hormones ensue. The story lurches from one set piece of deadpan nudge-nudge, wink-wink humor to another: We laugh at, and with, Don as he tries to navigate our hopelessly emotional, nonliteral world, learning as he goes. Simsion can plot a story, set a scene, write a sentence, finesse a detail. A pity more popular fiction isn't this well-written. If you liked Australian author Toni Jordan's Addition (2009), with its math-obsessed, quirky heroine, this book is for you. A sparkling, laugh-out-loud novel.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Don Tillman is a scientist. He thinks logically and approaches the world in a similar manner. Hence, when he needs to find a wife, he creates a long and involved questionnaire to winnow out unsuitable choices. (His requirements: nonsmoker, body mass index under 26, punctual, mathematically literate, a meat eater, and so on.) The 16-page, double-sided, scientifically valid document, he believes, offers his best chance of finding the perfect partner. That is, until he meets the fiery and intelligent Rosie Jarman. Rosie, who doesn't meet any of his requirements, is trying to track down her biological father, and she needs Don's expertise in genetics to do it. The two pursue their quests in tandem, but gradually, as their relationship deepens, their missions converge. VERDICT Readers will root for Don and Rosie throughout Simsion's delightful romantic comedy. Fans of the TV show The Big Bang Theory will see shades of Sheldon and Penny in these characters. [See Prepub Alert, 4/29/13; this title was also touted at the fifth annual BEA Librarians Shout and Share panel.-Ed.]-Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Read-out-loud laughter begins by page two in Simsion's debut novel about a 39-year-old genetics professor with Asperger's-but utterly unaware of it-looking to solve his Wife Problem. Don Tillman cannot find love; episodes like the Apricot Ice Cream Disaster prevent so much as a second date with a woman. His devised solution is the Wife Project: dating only those who "match" his idiosyncratic standards as determined by an exacting questionnaire. His plans take a backseat when he meets Rosie, a bartender who wants him to help her determine her birth father's identity. His rigidity and myopic worldview prevents him from seeing her as a possible love interest, but he nonetheless agrees to help, even though it involves subterfuge and might jeopardize his position at the university. What follows are his utterly clueless, but more often thoroughly charming exploits in exploring his capacity for romance. Helping Tillman are his only two friends, an older, shamelessly philandering professor, and the professor's long-suffering wife, who may soon draw the line in the sand. With Asperger's growing visibility in pop culture in recent years, as on CBS's The Big Bang Theory, this novel is perfectly timed. Agent: David Forrer, Inkwell Management. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Genetics professor Don Tillman's ordered, predictable life is thrown into chaos when love enters the equation in this immensely enjoyable novel. Never good with social cues, Don explains his difficulty empathizing with others, which he forthrightly says is a defining symptom of the autism spectrum, as a result of his brain simply being wired differently. Diagnosis is not the issue here, as the reader is rooting for Don as he searches for ways to fit in. With his fortieth birthday approaching, he designs a questionnaire to find a compatible female life partner using his overriding devotion to logic. But he finds his quest competing with the request of a woman to discover the identity of her biological father. The protagonist is passingly similar to that of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), but Simsion's first novel is not as dark, focusing instead on the humor and significance of what makes us human. Don is used to causing amusement or consternation in others, but as his self-awareness and understanding grow, so do his efforts to behave more appropriately. Determined and unintentionally sweet, Don embarks on an optimistic and redemptive journey. Funny, touching, and hard to put down, The Rosie Project is certain to entertain even as readers delve into deep themes. For a book about a logic-based quest for love, it has a lot of heart.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2010 Booklist