History Literature / TheRosieProject

''The Rosie Project'' is a 2013 novel by Graeme Simsion revolving around the fastidious geneticist Dr. Donald "Don" Tillman and his attempts to find a partner with the help of "The Wife Project." As he seeks a potential wife, Don meets Rosie Jarman, a free-spirited barmaid, who is trying to discover the identity of her absentee father. HilarityEnsues.

* AmbiguousDisorder: played with. Don is fairly obviously on the autistic spectrum, and he knows what autism is - the first novel opens with him giving a lecture on Asperger's Syndrome to a group of autistic children and their parents. But he resists being diagnosed as autistic himself [[spoiler: until the end of the third book]] because, as he says, he has been offered many psychological diagnoses over a lifetime and doesn't want another one, especially as people's [[HollywoodAutism assumptions about autism]] are usually unhelpful.

** In-universe version with Hudson. On discovering that he was going to be a father, Don had nicknamed the embryo BUD, short for Baby Under Development. When the baby is born, Don decides to update the name to HUD (Human Under Development), or, to make for a more euphonious-sounding name, Hudson. When Rosie points out that this implies that the baby is the son of a human who is still under development, Don points out that all humans, not just children, should be constantly under development, and Rosie concedes that this is certainly true of Don.

** Also, while Don happens to be white, male and heterosexual (like the majority of autistic characters in fiction unless they're white, male and asexual), the third book has a wider range of autistic men, women and children, several of whom are gay.

** Several characters occasionally compare Don to [[Film/RainMan 'Rain Man']], using it either as an insult or a backhanded complement depending on whether they regard him as an IdiotSavant or just an idiot, but Don isn't bothered by this, as he knows it isn't true.

* HollywoodAutism: averted. Don is geeky, but he doesn't have every stereotype going: he is an independent, successful professional who has a range of interests from science to cooking to martial arts, and, most importantly, he is a caring, compassionate person, a loyal friend, and, while Rosie initially assumes that he is 'incapable of love', successive books show him to be a loving husband and father, without becoming any less autistic.

* TransparentCloset: non-sexual version - Don is 'in the closet' not about being gay, which he isn't, but about being autistic, even though [[EverybodyKnewAlready everyone can see]] that he is 'not exactly average'. As another character, who is both gay and autistic, says, it's a lot easier to fake being heterosexual than to fake being neurotypical.

* AmbiguousDisorder: played with. Don is fairly obviously on the autistic spectrum, and he knows what autism is - the first novel opens with him giving a lecture on Asperger's Syndrome to a group of autistic children and their parents. But he resists being diagnosed as autistic himself [[spoiler: until the end of the third book]] because, as he says, he has been offered many psychological diagnoses after a lifetime and doesn't want another one, especially as people's [[HollywoodAutism assumptions about autism]] are usually unhelpful.

* AmbiguousDisorder: played with. Don is fairly obviously on the autistic spectrum, and he knows what autism is - the first novel opens with him giving a lecture on Asperger's Syndrome to a group of autistic children and their parents. But he resists being diagnosed as autistic himself [[spoiler: until the end of the third book]] because, as he says, he has been offered many psychological diagnoses after a lifetime and doesn't want another one, especially as people's [[[HollywoodAutism: assumptions about autism]] are usually unhelpful.

A sequel, ''The Rosie Effect'' was released in 2014. Sony Pictures has optioned the adaptation rights of the novel, although nothing else is known of the project.