Two amusing books

The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden is the second novel by Jonas Jonasson. Like his previous book (The Hundred Year-old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared) it is full of impossible things.....but they are so funny. Nombeko Mayeki began life in Soweto. She is intelligent and that is perhaps what saved her life. She is run over by a drunken engineer and ends up behind the razor wire of the South African security compound where the engineer makes her work out her sentence as a cleaner. Here she meets three Chinese girls, also serving sentences, who are in charge of food and post.  Nombeko is much brighter than the engineer and while he is hardly able to keep sober, she is solving the problem of the nuclear bombs. There should be six but somehow they have ended up with seven. Only Nombeko knows about it. When the engineer dies she uses her cunning to get herself out of the compound (without being shot in the back) and ends up in Sweden with the wrong package - she should have had antelope meat and somehow she ends up with the bomb (mis-directed by the Chinese girls). In Sweden she meets Holger Two, who officially does not exist as his twin brother, Holger One, has all the papers. The two brothers are very different. Holger One is following his late father's dream to kill the King ('down with the monarchy') and has a very angry young girl as his girlfriend. Nombeko falls for Holger Two and they have to do their best to keep Holger One and his girlfriend away from the bomb, and anything else, because they will do something stupid.

While Nombeko and Holga Two try to give the bomb to Sweden by making phone calls (no one will listen) there are a number of crazy scenes.They have to move from the deserted warehouse where they have been living and end up at a potato farm belonging to Holger One's girlfriend's grandmother. Before they arrive they lose control of the cart with the bomb on board and watch it roll down the hill. There follows a scene which had me in stitches.

All ends well eventually. This was a fun read, though I felt the ending was a little drawn out. That may have been because I'd already started my next book. You see, I only had a small section left to read and I was off for the weekend and didn't want to take two books with me. So I left it behind and took the new one!

The second book was my book group read -The Rosie Project, a first novel by Graeme Simsion. This was great. Don Tillman is a geneticist with obsessions. Basically he has Asperger's, but never recognises it in himself. His social skills a nil but he wants a wife, so he devises a questionnaire to hand out at speed dating and singles gatherings. Here starts The Wife Project. He has impossible standards and after sifting through hundreds of questionnaires, no one is suitable material to be Don's wife. Along comes Rosie. She is totally unsuitable but there is something about her. She is searching for her real father. Before long Don has devised The Rosie Project and so begins a hilarious time trying to track down the DNA of everyone her mother was in class with at University. Don goes against everything logical and breaks rules, using unethical means to obtain the DNA of all these men. He realises that in fact he is using this as an excuse to still see Rosie. Every time the two get close his social skills let him down and Rosie waltzes off. I so wanted them to get together. They get close, then it all goes wrong. Ah but it works in the end.

I did so enjoy this book. The scene with him and Rosie as cocktail waiters at a Uni reunion event, where they swab the glasses,  is wonderful. At the back is an interview with the author and a copy of the questionnaire to see if you would be a match for Don. I wasn't! Of the two books read back to back The Rosie Project is my out and out favouite. I am recommending this to friends. There is a follow up - The Rosie Effect - which I will probably come to at some time, but now, after several 'fun' books, I need something serious for a while.