Vanesssa Fox-O’Loughlin is a Director of AsIAm.ie and the Founder and Editor of Writing.ie. Over Christmas she interviewed Graeme Simsion on his book “The Rosie Project”, a book which centres around an expert in Autism, who also happens to have the condition. Below is the interview, share your thoughts on the novel in the comments below!
The Rosie Project is a global phenomenon, a debut novel, now out in paperback, which has been published in 32 countries, and optioned by Sony for the big screen – deals that have netted advances of over $1 million. I met Australian author Graeme Simsion in London just after Christmas, and as a mother of a nine year old who has high functioning atypical autism, was intrigued to find out how he had so brilliantly captured the protagonist, Don Tillman – a man who is an expert on Aspergers, but doesn’t realise that he has the condition himself.
The Rosie Project is a laugh out loud funny novel, both arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, featuring a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics , Don Tillman. And Don has decided it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father.
Don Tillman is a refreshing and positive role model for anyone touched by Aspergers, and Simsion was tremendously concerned not to mock or make fun of anyone with the condition, as he explained, [pullquote_right]“I gave it to people with Aspergers to read, and have had tremendously positive feedback. Don struggles with certain things, but he’s a hero, and we’re inside his head.[/pullquote_right]”
As anyone effected by Aspergers knows, there are many variations and nuances to the condition, yet Simsion had captured Tillman perfectly. I wondered how he’d achieved this. He explained that, having worked in IT for many years (and holding a PHD in Design Theory), “I’d worked with a lot of people like him and had a real sense of how people like him think. In the technical industry you have a mindset when you’re working on a technical problem – not looking at the emotional aspects, or trying to be tactful, you’re just trying to find a problem, looking at the facts. No-one is trying to send you subtle messages – you’re trying to find the right and the wrong.
‘I didn’t read any text books on Aspergers – I used elements of people I knew, until I had Don down. I didn’t want to make him Mr Aspergers, I wanted Aspergers to be an element of his character.”
Simsion’s big break came when he entered The Rosie Project manuscript for a competition. He told me, “My concern was to get it read. It was a literary award and I didn’t see my stories as being literary – I didn’t expect to get any recognition out of the competition, but I hoped that as the judges were people in publishing, they might say, from a commercial perspective, Charlie down the corridor might be interested in this, and that’s what happened.” As it turned out it won the €15,000 first prize, but, as Simsion says, “the important thing was getting shortlisted.”
Telling me about writing the book, he explained, “All good story comes out of character, to me at least. I decided here was a character I wanted to write about – it was inspired by a friend of mine, but it became nothing like him. I “work-shopped” the idea walking with my wife in New Zealand over four days.” Simsion was about to start a screen writing course and wanted to have a story in progress to apply the techniques he would be learning, to.
That screen writing course was to prove crucial, “I wrote the first draft of the novel in 4 weeks but I had a completely written screen play that I’d worked on for 5 years; it had been my school project. While I was studying screen writing, I learned the craft, so by the time I sat down to write the novel, I sat down with the characters clear, the plot clear and even some dialogue. I only had to add my character’s inner word and some prose. I was conscious of trying to write it cleanly. There isn’t that much description in the whole book – Elmore Leonard says you should leave out the bits people skip, and Don is not a man who is into the aesthetics of his environment, so describing a tree or the way the rain settles on it, isn’t in his character.”
The Rosie Project is a laugh out loud funny book that will keep you hooked to the last page. Taking the reader from Melbourne, Australia, to New York and back again, it’s a pacy read that opens up with world of genetics as much as Aspergers. For anyone interested in Simison’s writing process, there is a longer interview on writing.ie, but if you are looking for a great New Year read, The Rosie Project is a must buy!
By Vanessa Fox-O’Loughlin
