Barely Rational Decisions

“I have found a solution to the Wife Problem. As with so many scientific breakthroughs, the answer was obvious in retrospect.”

So begins our narrator of The Rosie Project. Genetics professor Don Tillman is hung up on clean bathrooms, apricot ice cream, and punctuality. Since his social skills have failed him in finding a suitable life partner, he turns to science. Thus begins the Wife Project.

After carefully crafting a written survey intended to weed out all but Mrs. Perfect, Don submits it to his best friend, a psychology professor. The next thing he knows, his friend has sent over Rosie.  Thinking she aced the questionnaire, Don invites her to dinner without preamble.  Soon, he discovers she fails almost all of his important criteria. However, it turns out to be the best night of his life. 

Funny and sweet, Graeme Simsion’s novel proves that not only do opposites attract, they accept (and embrace) the differences.

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Ours was a quick courtship. We had been dating for five months when we first started talking about marriage. So I did what any sensible girl would do when faced with a prospective groom, I began to look for a ring. By June, I had found it. My next move was to leave a message on his voice mail with the item code and ring size. His next move? A proposal a week later. 

But as anyone who is married knows, the true story begins after the vows are exchanged. J. Courtney Sullivan smartly adheres to that principle in her novel The Engagements. But first, she introduces Frances Gerety.  In the opening pages, we meet Frances who not only creates an ad slogan, but the tradition of proposing with a diamond engagement ring. Following Frances through her career, we discover with each new ad campaign how she remakes the diamond’s image according to the mineral resources, and pocketbooks, of each decade. 

Interspersed throughout Frances’ tale, are the stories of four couples. We read about their courtships, engagements, affairs, and disappointments. And of course we find out about their rings, which reflect the expectations and fashions of each time. By housing each couple in a unique setting and only revealing their story in parts, Sullivan succeeds in building genuine interest.  

Although she skips from Philadelphia to Paris, from 1947 to 2012, Sullivan rewards the patient reader by cleverly tying the five stories together toward the end of the novel. The ending is almost as gratifying as hearing those four little words. And saying yes.

The Visitors

January of 1922, a young girl and her guardian travel to Cairo. Recovering from illness, Lucy Payne is slowly coaxed out of her malaise with picnics under the pyramids, tea parties with archaeologists, and ballet lessons with her new friends Rose and Frances. Returning home to a devious tutor and absent father, Lucy has only her growing library of Egyptian lore to keep her company. 

The Visitors by Sally Beauman also introduces us to Lucy in her nineties.  Here, she reminisces with Rose while evading the prying questions of a documentary filmmaker. Their conversation foreshadows Carter's discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun and Lucy's own discoveries regarding Carter. 

Whether traveling through 1922 Cairo or 2002 Highgate, Beauman's characters are well-drawn to time and place. The reader, in turn, is drawn into the mystery of this multi-layered tale. And won't want to leave.