The Rosie Effect is a welcome return for the unique Don Tillman, an Australian man whose particular mental condition means that he is pretty much socially inept. He is a professor of genetics who, in his first outing, set out to find himself a wife. Incredibly, he was successful and ended up marrying Rosie. The two Aussies are now in the USA, Rosie is still studying medicine, and Don is professor at Columbia University. Don, a man who needs routines to keep him from the meltdowns he is apt to have is actually happy. Everything is "on schedule" in his life, and it is good. However, when Rosie falls pregnant, this upsets his equilibrium and his own way of coping is to read up on pregnancy, and then inform Rosie about what she can and cannot do. Rosie, a strong individual herself, does not take too kindly to this and things go from bad to worse when Gene, Don's only real friend and Rosie's supervisor, comes to live with them (unbeknownst to Rosie) after he splits from his wife in Australia. Don, who takes everything literally, but who has no natural empathy with anyone, even his wife, keeps on getting himself into deeper trouble with Rosie and, in his attempts to understand what it means to be a father better, ends up getting arrested in a children's playground. Desperate to keep any possible stress away from Rosie, he tries to tackle all the scrapes he gets into by himself, and things start to spiral out of control. All of which helps to convince Rosie that while she might be able to cope with Don, there would be no way that a baby or child would do so, and therefore, he is not good father material. Will their marriage survive? Author Graeme Simsion brings the familiar characters from the first book back to life, and by transporting them to a different place, takes the opportunity to add a couple of cracking new ones. There are some really amusing scenes, and some heart breaking ones too. Don is such a frustrating man that you want to be able to reach into the book to stop him making yet another poor choice or decision - decisions which seems totally logical, but only to him! Whilst Don is the main feature, I would have liked to have seen more of Rosie. She, by default, has to be a strong person in her own right to put up with Don, but she seems too much in the background and we don't really get to engage properly with what she is going through. I just wanted to scream JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER! Maybe that's the whole point of the book ... to remind us that communication is everything in a relationship and that things can go horribly wrong when the talking stops and the assumptions begin! Take heed ... for there's a little bit of Don and Rosie in all of us! I didn't enjoy this book as much as The Rosie Project, which blew me away, but it is still a great read, particularly the audio edition which I read, narrated by Dan O'Grady.
My STAR rating: FOUR.
Length: 432 print pages.
Price I paid: £1.99.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment