Don Tillman may be an emotional klutz, but he remains admirably self-aware: 'My innate logical skills were significantly greater than my interpersonal skills. His great skill as a writer of comic fiction, however, is to engender an empathetic response to a character incapable of empathising with others.

Simsion is circumspect when asked where Tillman might be placed on the autism spectrum, claiming to have done no specific research into Asperger's syndrome other than to have worked in IT departments for 30 years. Naturally this isn't quite the expression of paternal joy that Rosie had been hoping for, and the novel charts the inevitable strain that impending fatherhood brings to their relationship, culminating in the mandatory rom-com dash to the airport to salvage everything before it's too late. Pleased that I would now probably survive, but shocked that the situation had arisen in the first place, and expecting a thorough investigation into the circumstances.' Don is in the middle of dicing vegetables for dinner – having first downloaded a measuring app to his phone to accurately gauge the half-inch dimensions of his 'reference cube' – when Rosie announces that she is pregnant.ĭon's reaction is Donnish in the extreme: 'I was happy in the way that I would be happy if the captain of an aircraft in which I was travelling announced that he had succeeded in restarting one engine after both had failed.

The sequel finds the couple relocated to New York and working in the medical department of Columbia University.

Sequel to the rosie project