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.