The Rosie Effect

“Rain Man! I had seen the film. I did not identify in any way with Rain Man, who was inarticulate, dependent, and unemployable. A society of Rain Men would be dysfunctional. A society of Don Tillmans would be efficient, safe, and pleasant for all of us.

Those who found themselves laughing and pulling for Don and Rosie in The Rosie Project will similarly enjoy The Rosie Effect. The Rosie Project was narrated by socially inept and brilliant geneticist Don Tillman, who approaches problems with excellent logic and little common sense. He's largely blind to the social cues we take for granted (he's been the subject of many diagnoses, including Aspberger's Syndrome), but he fell in love with Rosie ­Jarman while helping her find out who her show more ­father was. If you haven't read that first one yet, read no further in this review, and go read The Rosie Project.

In The Rosie Effect Don and Rosie have married and now live in New York, where he’s a professor and she’s a medical student. He loves sex with Rosie, and has studied carefully how to best approach her about it:

“Sex was absolutely not allowed to be scheduled, at least not by explicit discussion, but I had become familiar with the sequence of events likely to precipitate it: a blueberry muffin from Blue Sky Bakery, a triple shot of espresso from Otha’s, removal of my shirt, and my impersonation of Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Don has adjusted to Rosie's disorganization compared to him - he's philosophical, for example, about never being sure which room her bath towel will end up in. But something is off-kilter, as we know from the book's opening line: "Orange juice was not scheduled for Fridays." Rosie drops the bombshell that "we're pregnant." The ultimate chaos creator, as all parents know. Don responds with his usual determination, including creating a new Standardized Meal System with optimum nutrition for pregnancy, and as usual gets himself into deeper and deeper trouble. Having been advised to observe children interacting, he starts videotaping kids in a playground, and soon gets himself into more trouble.

He is surrounded by an eclectic group of friends, including his overly-amorous friend Gene and his insightful wife Claudia, Dave and Sonia, who are expecting their first child and experiencing their own chaos, and the rock star landlord for Don and Rosie's apartment who takes a shine to Don. All of them want to help Don, as does a disapproving therapist he is ordered to see, but their advice often is at cross-purposes. Meanwhile, Rosie, whom he views as "the world's most perfect woman", is developing serious doubts about Don's ability to cope as a father, and her ability to cope with him, and their relationship enters dangerous waters.

Will it all sort out? Read it and find out. As with the first book, you'll find yourself cheering for Rosie and Don to make it. Four stars. show less

After the global success of The Rosie Project nothing was surer than that Graeme Simsion’s sequel would be a runaway best-seller, and so it is.

The first book was one my favourite reads in 2013, so I was quick to get hold of The Rosie Effect. In this sequel, Don and Rosie are married and living in the USA; Don works at Columbia University, where Rosie is also studying. The scene is set when Rosie announces to Don that she is pregnant. Soon after, Don’s philandering friend Gene shows up, having been kicked out by his wife. Can Don handle the pressures of impending fatherhood, whilst also solving the Gene Problem?

The Rosie Project was a captivating and original rom-com, with a unique narrative voice in Don, seemingly a show more highly-functional Asperger’s sufferer. Having married off his main characters, Simsion has to follow another route this time, and he chooses to make Don the centre of a farce surrounding his fears about his readiness to be a father. As Don tries to educate himself and help Rosie, he just sinks further into a mass of confusion. This is a road that has been travelled many times before however, and limited laughs can be milked from such an unoriginal idea. Don is as awkward as ever, but Rosie is pretty much reduced to a cypher compared to her presence in the first book. The reader is very much with Don in this one, sometimes at Rosie’s expense, and you may find yourself getting angry at his treatment at the hands of others.

The ending is just a bit pat for my tastes, but I suppose that’s a feature of the genre. Having invented a couple of great characters in his first novel, I can’t help but feel that Simsion has failed to let them shine as well this time. show less

I did not like this book as much as the first. For one, it has a really slow beginning. Two, a major Incident in the book (not the pregnancy) is entirely contrived, horribly awkward, and really over the top for me. (There is a subsequent event that left me feeling the same way.) I kept feeling like I was watching one of those later episodes of "Monk" where I had to fast forward through the painfully awkward scenes because they hurt too much to watch. Once you get passed the Incident and into the meat of the story, however, most of the book is enjoyable. There is a lot of weird storytelling going on here, and although it gets tied up at the end, I was annoyed at how many secrets were being kept and the levels of deception to which show more everyone went. I feel like a lot of the charm from the first book was lost in this second one. show less

I feel that this one is missing some of the humor that I loved in The Rosie Project. Everything seemed much too serious. Rosie knew what she was getting into when she married Don but now she's "accidentally" pregnant and realizes he's "too crazy." I would have found it much more enjoyable to see Rosie and Don go through the pregnancy together instead of all the secret-keeping (a problem I had with the Sarah MacLean book I just read, too.).

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion is book two in the Don Tillman series that began with bestselling; The Rosie Project. Tillman is a character that is as lovable as he is socially inept. His audience will and does want to hug him tightly as he tries to make it through the challenges of the real world, outside of his genetics laboratory. He's funny without meaning to be. He is the literary embodiment of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, only with a wish to love and care for others. But his inability to show emotion keeps him from doing so. So he must approach his relationships as an experiment. Weighing all the logical variables. Only in marriage there is little logic involved and the variables are always changing. And now, the biggest show more variable possible is about to be thrown into the equation.

"..Rosie raised the glass as if proposing a toast. This turned out to be exactly what she was doing.
'We've got something to celebrate, Captain,' she said. She looked at me for a few seconds. She knows that I am not fond of surprises. I assumed that she had achieved some important milestone with her thesis. Or perhaps she had been offered a place in the psychiatry training program on completion of the medical course. This would be extremely good news, and I estimated the probability of sex at greater than 90 percent.
She smiled-then, presumably to increase the suspense, drank from her glass. Disaster! It was as if it contained poison. She spat it out, over her white dress, and ran to the bathroom. I followed her as she removed the dress and ran water over it.
Standing in her half-purple underwear, pumping water in and out of the dress, she turned back to me. Her expression was far too complex to analyze.
'We're pregnant,' she said..."

Tillman, who is still gathering the knack at being a husband is now faced with the oncoming responsibility of being a father. Add onto it a best friend who is tossed out by his wife for continuing infidelity, another who is having difficulty sharing his emotions with his wife as well, and an aging rock star landlord with issues connecting with his children.

Tillman approaches all of this in his normal analytical way with disastrous results. He ends up arrested, threatened with prison or at the least having his visa revoked and being deported, and with the love of life Rosie, leaving him with his unborn child. Can this brilliant genetics scientist figure out the answer in time?

The Rosie Effect suffers from the same disease as most sequels. It isn't as good as the first. More so, its not even in its league. Tillman is as lovable as ever, but what was a nuisance in the first novel has become an overbearing albatross in The Rosie Effect.

Every other character in this book sucks! All the men are emotionally weak and unable to be of any support to anyone at all. The women are either hindered by emotional pain or angry and bitter at everyone to see beyond their own issues. But worst of all, is Rosie.

This is the love of his life? Seriously Tillman, you need to get out more. A well educated student of psychiatry can't recognize her own self-destructive and vindictive emotional mood swings? There is absolutely nothing likable about Rosie. Nothing that says she deserves a man who loves her. Even if the man is unable to express it well on an emotional level. But then she knew that well before she married him, and there is a lingering feeling that she got pregnant on purpose even though she knew they would not be in a position to support the child emotionally or otherwise. She is selfish and childish and if you really love the character of Don Tillman, the last thing you want is for him to stay with her.

The book ends with the baby born, everyone happy and the marriage saved. That is not a happy ending. The happy ending is the baby born, Tillman learning to become a father and Rosie run over by a freakin' train!

Now that's a happy ending! show less

Last year, Graeme Simsion blew me away with The Rosie Project. Despite my qualms at the beginning, Don Tillman soon became a character who I absolutely adored. His punctuality, honesty, and over the top preparation for everything in life made him an intriguing person. I wasn't expecting to love Don. I wasn't even really expecting to like him, to be honest. Graeme Simsion's writing prowess changed all of that, and I was completely thrilled. So, when I saw The Rosie Effect pop up as a sequel? Well, I knew I'd have to read it. No question about it.

Now for those of you who might be coming in to these books new, let me tell you a little about Don. He has Asperger's, and as such is a rather complex man. He schedules everything, loves to gain show more new knowledge, and has a bit of a hard time with empathy and social situations. That's why I was so intrigued by the premise of The Rosie Effect. We all know that the prospect of a new baby is exciting, but stressful. I could only imagine how Don, of all people, would deal with an unexpected pregnancy. In my mind, I saw lots of intense planning! I was right. Oh yes, I was right.

I think it's only fair to mention that Rosie is rather insufferable in this particular book. I had a difficult time with her the first time around. Her feminist views, and overall demeanor in fact, were only bearable because Don was so sweet on her. I couldn't let her derail my adoration of him. This time, I almost put this book down multiple times because of Rosie's character. Her selfishness, her petty views, the way she treated Don, all of it made me want to slap her and tell her that he was too good for her anyway. As before, Don really stole the show and that helped a lot with my enjoyment of this book. I'm pretty sure my opinion of Rosie borders on abject hate at his point though.

Moving on, even Rosie wasn't enough to keep me from loving this story. Watching Don's growth from the last book to this one was wonderful and hilarious. His new groups of friends, the new problems he creates for himself, all of it was classic Don. He's a character that I can't help but like. I have to say that he just keeps on surprising me. Despite everything else, I had a lot of fun watching him navigate this new chapter in his life. Bravo, Mr. Simsion. Let's hope that if these two come back for another book, Rosie gets her act together. show less

I have enjoyed this second look at Don and Rosie, and how they handle pregnancy. Just like in the first book, Don hilariously gets into regular trouble as he completely mishandles social situations. The meat of the book however is dealing with Don and Rosie's relationship, and Rosie is the one who is self-centered, ignorant and irrational. Despite Don's best efforts and his friends' honest help, the relationship crumbles. I wanted to shake Rosie, "you don't know what you have, you idiot!"

Don's antiques and point of view is of course less fresh in the second book, but he is always ready to improve himself, and grows a lot. The plot however was quite haphazard, and many events seemed too contrived, especially the ending. It is just a bit show more too odd that Rosie never enters Don's bathroom until the end, and the Don happens to get a project where they happen to capture footage of him with a baby that just happens to be shown at an event where Rosie just happens to be there because her plane just happened to be turned around. I still enjoyed it, but this is more of a 3.5 stars. show less