I first met Don Tillman while living in London. One morning a parcel appeared through the small letterbox in my front door. Inside was a fluorescent orange book entitled The Rosie Project. I sat atop my bed in my West Kensington flat, with a view of Earl’s Court Station through my bedroom window, and, as Don charmed me with his eccentricities, I found myself swiftly transported back to Melbourne. Having lived in London for a year, I was soon due to return to my home city, and The Rosie Project welcomed me back, reminding me of everything I loved about faraway Melbourne. I was very excited, then, to discover there would be a sequel: The Rosie Effect, this time set in New York.

Now married, Don and Rosie are expecting, an event bound to wreak havoc in Don’s orderly life. Don, in an effort to come to terms with his impending fatherhood, is ‘in danger of prosecution, deportation and professional disgrace’. He embarks on a highly entertaining, albeit occasionally implausible, journey of knowledge acquisition, involving the not-so-discreet filming of children playing in the park, assisting with the birth of a calf and partaking in a single-sex-relationship parenting study. The ‘average person’ may have been able to navigate pre-parenthood matrimony with little trouble, but not Don. Unable to detect subtlety, nuance or sarcasm in others, and with little capacity for deceit, Don conceals his questionable activities from Rosie in order to minimise the potential danger of cortisol crossing her placenta wall (i.e. ‘stress’), and unwittingly places their relationship at risk of becoming unstuck.

I love the way Graeme Simsion writes, particularly his vivid character portraits. He has a knack for storytelling and devising creative plot twists, ensuring I want to keep reading page after page. Like The Rosie Project, The Rosie Effect is fresh, funny and engrossing, bound to reward Simsion’s fans and capture the imagination of a new readership.

Alexandra Mathew