“When you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

#CBR12 Bingo: White Whale (on my TBR list since early 2014) (Would also work for Cannonballer Says, Debut, or Red or Yellow – depending on what edition of the novel you are reading)

Don Tillman lives his life on a fairly rigid schedule. He eats the same things every week, he has set aside a certain amount of time for work, exercise, cleaning his flat and so forth, and any deviations that force him to change the schedule makes him annoyed. He doesn’t socialise much, except for the occasional dinner with his best (and pretty much only) friend Gene and his wife Claudia. The few times he has been on dates, it has tended to be disastrous because the woman always turns out to drink too much, or smoke, or show up late or have some other absolutely unforgivable flaw. Yet Don would like a wife, as he is rather lonely. He creates a multi-page, detailed questionnaire, created specifically to rule out all the women with which he will clearly be incompatible. Gene helps him process the many responses he gets and promises to send some of the promising candidates that pass, to meet him.