The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

 The Rosie Effect
Author:  Graeme Simsion
Published:  October 2014
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Pages:  414
ISBN 9781443435901
General:  General Fiction
Source:  borrowed

Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back. If you were swept away by Graeme Simsion’s international smash hit The Rosie Project, you will love The Rosie Effect.

The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are happily married and living in New York. But they’re about to face a new challenge.

Rosie is pregnant.

Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a father, but his unusual research style gets him into trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene is on hand to offer advice: he’s left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie.

As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia back together, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him most.

Get ready for The Rosie Effect, the new hilarious and heart-wrenching romantic comedy of the year.

My thoughts:

Graeme Simsion has authored another entertaining romantic comedy in The Rosie Effect, the follow-up to the much loved The Rosie Project.  I adored The Rosie Project because I laughed so much throughout this endearing story about a brilliant man who was terribly socially inept.  He has OCD and is even, perhaps, slightly autistic and he is hilarious, though he's not trying to be. By the sixth page I was in tears - joyous tears of laughter.  I love it when a book can reach me that way.

Rosie and Don are an adorable couple who, like most any couple out there, fail to communicate what they need from each other in a manner that the other understands.  Don's mishaps as he is trying to prove himself are plausible and quite funny but I wouldn't say The Rosie Effect is as humorous as The Rosie Project. The Rosie Effect is a deeper exploration of the human condition and the dynamics of a married couple learning to communicate and to love and accept each other and themselves.

While The Rosie Effect is humorous, there's a lot more depth in Don's character as he discovers he is soon to be a father and doesn't know how to handle the news.  He endeavours to be supportive, learning all he can about pre-natal care and nutrition, purchasing the best and safest pram and crib he can.  But, despite his efforts, Rosie is unsure about Don's ability to bond with a child.  Don must examine himself and learn how to show he is emotionally available and save his marriage.

Gene, a professor of psychology and Don's best friend, is a surprise in this book!  In The Rosie Project he comes across as a bit of a sleaze (who am I kidding, a big sleaze) with no concern for how his behaviour affects his wife Claudia.  Fortunately in The Rosie Effect Gene has matured and we learn a bit more about this man as a friend and father as he plays an important supportive role in this story.

I love The Rosie Effect.  It offers a lot to the reader.  You will laugh, you may require a tissue or two, and you will likely become introspective in regards to your own relationships.  I may not have laughed as much as I did while reading The Rosie Project, but Simsion evokes more emotion at different levels with The Rosie Effect.  I'd venture to say his plot has matured along with his characters and that, my friends, is a good thing too.

Sensitive readers:  language/profanity warning

Meet the Author:

GRAEME SIMSION is an IT consultant and educator. He wrote The Rosie Project as a screenplay before turning it into his first novel. The screenplay won the Australian Writers Guild Inscription Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script in 2010 and then won the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. Follow him on twitter @GraemeSimsion.

Preview: The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion - book review

The Rosie Project
Author:  Graeme Simsion
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Published:  2013 (original place of publication:  Australia)
Pages:  329
Genre:  Fiction; romantic comedy
Source:  Borrowed 

Wife Wanted.

Must be punctual, logical, and enjoy travelling by bicycle.  No smokers, drinkers, or horoscope readers need apply.

Don Tillman has a brilliant scientific mind, but social situations confound him.  He's never had a second date.  And so, in the evidence-based manner in which he approaches all things, he embarks upon the Wife Project; a sixteen-page questionnaire to find the perfect partner.  Then in walks Rosie Jarman.

Rosie is on a quest of her own.  She's looking for her biological father; a search that a certain genetics expert might just be able to help her with.  Soon Don puts the Wife Project on the back burner in order to help Rosie purse the Father Project.  As an unlikely relationship blooms, Don is about to realize that, despite the best scientific efforts, you don't find love; love finds you.

My thoughts:

"I may have found a solution to the Wife Problem.  As with so many scientific breakthroughs, the answer was obvious in retrospect.  But had it not been for a series of unscheduled events, it is unlikely I would have discovered it."  (opening paragraph, page 1)

By page six, I was laughing to the point of tears.  On page 24, I commented to my husband, "Oh dear, this book is just too much fun."

My husband was the "captive" recipient of several oral readings from The Rosie Project as we were driving and he was nearby, being the only other person in the vehicle.  I just couldn't keep it in and so we shared some laughs during our long drive south and back.  

"Claudia advised me that I should have abandoned the experiment prior to Elizabeth leaving.  Obviously.  But at what point?  Where was the signal?  These are the subtleties I fail to see.....The Apricot Ice-cream Disaster had cost a whole evening of my life, compensated for only by the information about simulation algorithms."

Professor Don Tillman is a scientist studying the genetic predisposition for cirrhosis of the liver, entailing the intoxication of  mice. Don Tillman is not unlike Gregory Peck in appearance but incredibly socially awkward, slow to pick up on social cues, and incredibly similar to Sheldon of The Big Bang Theory.  (If you enjoy The Big Bang Theory, you'll love this book, as I do.)  He's an adorable nerd, funny in his own way, with limited empathy and uncertain of his ability to learn to love.  Yet, he will sacrifice his own career as a professor at a renowned university to help a beautiful lady.  A choice he has to ponder at great length to identify his motive.

When Don realizes that his motive for helping Rosie with The Father Project in an after hours unethical investigation utilizing the lab at the university is not purely academic, he finds himself in a world totally foreign to his logical, methodical, systematical self.  He scales walls, collects hair samples, bar tends, obtains urine samples..... He even put his own Wife Project on hold to assist Rosie with hers.  Aside from the scientific collection and analysis of data, all this is foreign territory to this adorable funny nerd.  

The Rosie Project is a charming and disarming exploration of the pursuit of love in a world of algorithms and logic as defined by science that unwittingly turns a man's world upside down in hysterical fashion.  If asked to describe The Rosie Project in one word, I would say "tantalizing."  For truly it is!  I absolutely loved this book.

****With great anticipation, I'm excited to announce a sequel to The Rosie Project:  The Rosie Effect - to be released late September 2014.  I simply must pre-order my copy.  It's the logical thing to do.

About the author:

Graeme Simsion, PhD was the owner of a successful consulting business before he decided, at fifty, that he would become a writer.  The Rosie Project is his first novel.  Graeme is a New Zealand born Australian author, playwright, screen writer and data modeller.  He won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his debut novel, The Rosie Project.

www.gremesimsion.com

Twitter:  @GraemeSimsion and #ProfDonTillman

#TheRosieProject   #GraemeSimsion  

The Rosie Project - looks like one for the shelves!