I assume this is a very popular book though I just heard about it recently. It's on many must read lists, discussed at lots of book groups and, for a good reason, it's readable, fun, and about relationships, this time one between Professor Don Tillman, who suffers from a mild form of Aspergers and his opposite, free spirited Rosie Jarman. Don is a typical evidenced based professor, including his search for a wife. Thus, he puts together a series of characteristics he would look for in a wife or avoid in a mate. As luck would have it, after several obvious failures with the dating life, he meets Rose Jarman through a colleague. Right off he writes here off of his list because she has just about everything he wants to avoid in a women. She is free spirited, spontaneous, unconventional, emotional, often irrational. Don, however, enjoys his first date with her enough to help with her Father Project. Her mother has never told her who her real father is and Rosie wants to know. Don, because of his background in DNA research, thinks he's the perfect man to help. So Rosie reluctantly agrees to Don's help even though she has doubts.
The story then has various twists and turns, as Don slowly discovers, as they collaborate on her Father Project, that a evidence based search for a life partner does not always work, that there are human variables that cannot be measured, like his attraction to all the traits in a women that he thought he would dislike.
This is Simsion's first novel and it's rare for a first book, especially by a New Zealander, to become a best seller. It's what I would call a woman's book, and not in a pejorative sense. There's no violence, no murders or abuse, no drugs or alcohol, just a touching story about love and attraction. It's a good read.
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