Perhaps it’s that immaculate sense of security (and I really mean super attentive) you feel around them, or that you respect how they’ve managed to stay true to themselves even if they’re often perceived as losers, but that’s how you feel when you follow the protagonists of these two books.
Both stories are romantic, comedic, and have protagonists that share a similar take on life. The only difference is that one is a teenage prodigy and the other is an 39-year-old geneticist, and obviously the authors who penned them (one is a multi award-winning novelist already, and the other debuted his bestseller).
Both Colin Singleton (in An Abundance of Katherines) and Mr. Don Tillman (in The Rosie Project) are intellects, full-on left-brained (some may argue that Colin is full of feelings, although it’s worth noting that he’s a teenager with raging hormones), and their definition of success is a meticulous effort of going the straight line, plus they’re very sweet in ways you wouldn’t expect. It’s why they both end up falling in love with someone they wouldn’t have thought they’d fall in love with in a million years, so you close both books with a different man from the beginning.
Although age-wise I can relate to his emotions, I think Mr. Tillman is a more relatable character. Find out why.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Blurb: When it comes to relationships, everyone has a type. Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. He has dated–and been dumped by–19 Katherines. In the wake of The K-19 Debacle, Colin–an anagram-obsessed washed-up child prodigy–heads out on a road trip with his overweight, Judge Judy-loving friend Hassan. With 10,000 dollars in his pocket and a feral hog on his trail, Colin is on a mission to prove a mathematical theorem he hopes will predict the future of any relationship (and conceivably win the girl).
The thing with love stories is that you either get a happily-ever-after or you don’t. The genre leaves a lot of room for the author to play with his/her plot, and John Green has played it well with each of his books.
With most YAs, the romantic plot is fairly simplistic and predictable. John Green’s 2006 hit was a finalist for the Michael L. Printz Award for a reason: An Abundance of Katherines was good writing, well-paced, and studded with comedy. While I’m not a big fan of how he ended the story (some relationships and emotions still unresolved, what about Colin’s parents, and what about Hassan’s? I was hoping to get snippets of the present lives of all 19 Katherines as well …), my reading experience was unlike anything else because of all the funny/informative/trivial/intriguing footnotes. It’s like reading Mental Floss or textbooks with those little ‘Did You Know?’ facts, not to mention Colin’s fascination for wordplay – he’s cute that way.
Colin’s obsessive aspiration to be a genius will surely relate to us and our bouts of intense self-absorption during our early adulthood. Despite our efforts to define our own identity in the world, the world’s already got a fixed opinion of us, and we just don’t know who else we are except the child prodigy we once were (Colin was homeschooled for a while because he’s too smart), the common denominator of all the people we’ve dated (Katherine I-XIX), the loser in school (Colin went by Colon since middle school), and everything else Colin will soon no longer be. Until we’re “somebody” who does something that matters, i.e. making a brilliant theorem that will win a Nobel prize or the like, we’re still going to be a nobody.
We tend to look outside to find ourselves looking outside to find our worth, but Colin looks within. By within, it’s collecting all the factual data in his brain and making theorems to predict the future and continuously testing its accuracy.1 At one point, he was misunderstood by his closest people to be selfish because of this internal locus of control. He simply behave in ways as if the world revolves around him (don’t we all?), even though his intentions couldn’t be any more different.
The lessons he learned throughout the book are worth mentioning here: That there’s always an anomaly in man-made formulas (it’s not like it’s the law of gravity or something), what makes you matter is what matters to you (your unique identity), and that no matter how neatly your love history has come to align itself, your present and future relationships will depend on your decisions about who you are and what you think you should do, not on external circumstances, and therefore will always remain unpredictable.
By the end, he’s already beginning to rewrite the stories he tells himself about his life and his idea of love. The things that happened throughout the book hadn’t been that long, so you can sympathize the fact that he hasn’t fully let go of the when-I-grow-up-I-want-to-be-a-genius idea. Thanks to the new girl in Colin’s life, Colin learned the art of storytelling. You find find multiple, nonlinear life lessons in good stories, whereas in linear graphs you’ll only get fixed, predetermined connecting dots that have no meaning.
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Blurb: Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand. Conceding to the statistical probability that there is a significant someone for everyone, he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical – most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.
Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is beguiling, fiery, intelligent – and on a quest of her own. As an unlikely relationship blooms, the scientifically minded geneticist confront the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.
I was sold the instant I first read the blurb. I thought it’d be interesting to see how someone would approach love life as you would with a scientific eye, as I once somewhat did (and still somewhat is lol).
Professor Don Tillman is a genetics scientist and a very logical man. He’s undiagnosed with Asperger‘s, so he’s socially behind, but extremely sharp. He measures everything, evaluates everything, and although he wasn’t able to empathize humans beyond the diagnostics and technicalities, he understands the way people think he’s “weird”, and he’s okay with it. of He’s approaching his 40s, someone said he’d be a great husband, and so he decides he’s getting a wife.
Both Gene and Claudia (his only 2 friends) suggested online dating, going into commercial matchmaking, speed dating, etc, but Don decided it’s more efficient to design a full-blown questionnaire to filter out the many unfit candidates: Women who are always late, women who are vegetarian, overweight, smoke, drink, and/or have STDs. That’s how blunt he is … in a naive way. You always find him with a rigid weekly schedule that he never fails to follow (“I arrived on schedule at 6.57 p.m.”, “I never drink coffee after 3.48 p.m.”), and he even had a standardized meal system for all 7 days of the week. Here’s why:
1. No need to accumulate recipe books.
2. Standard shopping list – hence very efficient shopping.
3. Almost zero waste – nothing in the refrigerator or pantry unless required for one of the recipes.
4. Diet planned and nutritionally balanced in advance.
5. No time wasted wondering what to cook.
6. No mistakes, no unpleasant surprises.
7. Excellent food, superior to most restaurants at a much lower price.
8. Minimally cognitive load required (Don: “The cooking procedures are in my cerebellum – virtually no conscious effort is required.” *lol*)
I know right, he’s so much fun to follow around. When he starts meeting Rosie it’s clear that his amygdala’s constantly firing hormones throughout his system. We see that his behaviors cannot be explained by any logical explanation. Rosie is always late, smokes, drinks, a vegetarian, and a barmaid, but she’s beautiful and intelligent, and finds Don amusing (the way Don agrees with a simple-and-sweet ‘Correct’ instead of the normal ‘Yes’). He offered to use his genetics expertise to help find Rosie’s biological father, and just like that The Father Project became a higher priority over The Wife Project. Thus they were thrown into spontaneous thrills and ‘improbable’ circumstances that forced Don to work his brain around his heart.
Although for the most part the story arc is predictable, the character was hilarious and the journey was an enjoyable read. After I read the book, I found out that Bill Gates, one of the famed geeks IRL, enlisted The Rosie Project as his favorite books. All the more reason you should check it out if you haven’t already.
Despite the different target age groups, I thought An Abundance of Katherines was a much heavier subject. Essentially, Colin was dealing with an existential crisis, while Don’s story and his naive bluntness, captured by Simsion’s simple writing, made the endearing story of The Rosie Project a lighter read.
P.S. The highly anticipated sequel, The Rosie Effect, will be out really soon!!! (December 30, 2014)
Love, Stace
