44 pages • 1 hour read
Graeme SimsionThe Rosie Project
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5–8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Undeterred by his failure at the group dinner date, Don brings his questionnaire to a singles cocktail party. He is approached by a French woman, Fabienne, who asks him directly if she can buy him a drink elsewhere and announces that she would like to have sex. Don finds her very attractive, but he’s solely focused on the results of the questionnaire. Don tells her that someone suitable may show up if she waits longer; he’s disappointed when she fails to qualify as a suitable partner according to his questionnaire.
Next, Don tries speed-dating. He eliminates all of the women quickly and efficiently using his questionnaire. He is puzzled that none of the women want to talk to him once he tells them that they have been eliminated.
When Don posts the questionnaire on the internet, he receives 279 responses, bringing his total to 304. Gene helps him to sort through them, insisting that Don is missing some good potential mates because he is unwilling to compromise on some of his requirements. Gene offers to look through all of the questionnaires and give Don the results. Don agrees to ask the women that Gene identifies as candidates out for dinner.
Chapter 6 Summary
About two hours later, a red-haired, slender, attractive woman, of about 30, knocks on Don’s door. She tells Don that Professor Barrow, Gene, sent her to see him. Don, believing she is a wife candidate, asks her out to dinner. She sarcastically names an expensive restaurant, thinking that he’s kidding. Don misses the sarcasm and hacks into the restaurant’s computer to make a last-minute reservation for 8 p.m. that night. He calls Gene, who laughs, and tells Don her name is Rosie.
Arriving at the restaurant just before 8 p.m., Don argues with the maître d’ over the restaurant’s jacket requirement. Because it’s unsanitary, he refuses to wear a jacket provided by the restaurant. An aikido expert, Don defends himself when security personnel attempt to remove him from the restaurant. Rosie arrives in the midst of this chaos. She knows the maître d’ and they are allowed to leave.
Rosie is hungry and talks Don into making dinner for her at his place. Don has already dismissed Rosie as a potential wife; she is late, wears a lot of jewelry, and she doesn’t cook.
Chapter 7 Summary
Because she has been eliminated as a potential wife candidate, Don feels comfortable with Rosie. Though he’s alarmed by her invasion of his personal space, he does not protest when she puts on music and rearranges the furniture on his balcony without asking permission.
Chapter 8 Summary
Don makes a delicious lobster salad, and they have a great time eating, drinking wine, and talking on his balcony. Rosie understands and laughs at his jokes. Don has never eaten outside on his balcony before. The final blow to Rosie’s candidacy for life partner, however, comes when she smokes a cigarette.
Rosie tells Don that she is looking for her biological father. Her mother died in a car accident when Rosie was 10 years old. The man who raised her, Phil, is not her real father. Her mother, a doctor, had an affair with another medical student after a graduation party while she was also seeing Phil.
Rosie leaves at 2:30 a.m.
Chapter 4-8 Analysis
In these chapters, at least three women attempt to signal their interest in Don—Julia from the Asperger’s lecture, Olivia from the group dinner, and Fabienne from the cocktail party—but Don is unable to recognize their interest in him. Don dismisses all of these women as potential mates because of minor deviations from his rigid requirements. These rejections make Don’s attraction to Rosie, despite her glaring and more serious deviations from his requirements, even more ironic.
Don’s mistake in thinking that Rosie is a wife candidate drives this portion of the plot. Gene does not correct Don’s error, perhaps because he wants to see how Don copes with this outspoken woman. Don immediately eliminates her from consideration in his mind, but his feelings betray him.
Don finds Rosie extremely attractive. He enjoys her company and allows her to rearrange both his apartment and his schedule. Rosie poses a threat to his ordered existence, while simultaneously opening up his life to exciting and pleasurable experiences. Ironically, she is a far worse match than the three women he has previously rejected. However, just as he befriended Daphne and helped her cope with her husband’s illness and death, Don cannot resist a woman who needs him. In addition, she poses a question that is interesting to him as a geneticist—who is Rosie’s biological father?
