The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2015-12-05 07:49 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2015-12-05 07:49 pm
Entry tags:
The Rosie Project: Love and Embarrassment
I've finally finished reading The Rosie Project, which is a lovely light read featuring a narrator with Aspergers syndrome, which should make it an instant favourite for me. And it is. I love it. It's really good.
But it's taken me over a year to read, becasue I simply can't stand it.
I've always been completely helpless in the face of embarrassment comedy. Seinfeld, or Coupling, or (god forbid) The Worst Week of My Life are, for me, the equivalent of a horror movie. A book's a bit easier than TV, because I can skip ahead a few pates and, assuming things turn out okay, go back to skim it and, if that seems safe, read it properly. It just triggers an intense overstimulation of every panic hormone I have every few pages, because I empathise so deeply with characters--far more than I do with people, to be honest.
In any case, The Rosie Project's a great book. Super Aspergers Cocktail Man was, without a doubt, the highlight of the book for me. I want him running my local bar. And then I want time to be able to go there. :P
I was a little put off by the love relationship--I've always been dubious about incompatibility so strong that it's love. Then again, I do understand that Hubby and I are weird, in the fact that we are so very close to identical in our outlooks and what, as it turns out, is more of a Vulcan love grown from and strengthened by logic and convergent neural networks than one that could be found in the pages of... well, pretty much any story ever. I don't think I've ever managed to covey to anyone how awesome it is to be in a relationship that's as close to narcicisstic as you can get outside clonecest. But I did like Rosie and Don's love relationship anyway, mainly because of the dancing scene. That was... well, it was for me the best scene in the story for showing that Rosie really did love him for his craziness as much as he loved her for hers. Even if I had to read it backwards to make my adrenaline behave.
Technically, it was beautiful. I can never write humour, and there was a great deal of sly commentary going on that didn't exactly go over Don's head, but that he just didn't get emotionally. I love the way an inadequate narrator allows you to draw a big scene or memory in a few crucial details that wakes up the entire scene in the reader's head, without the narrator running the risk of getting too tell-y, because even if they are telling, they're telling the wrong things. And I love the way an inadequate narrator allows you to build suspense, where you can cue the reader in to what's about to happen to make them squirm, and still take the narrator by surprise. I'm unfortunately just too squeamish when there's embarrassment on the line.
Great book, well worth a read. Unless you're like me, you probably won't need a cushion to hide under. :)
But it's taken me over a year to read, becasue I simply can't stand it.
I've always been completely helpless in the face of embarrassment comedy. Seinfeld, or Coupling, or (god forbid) The Worst Week of My Life are, for me, the equivalent of a horror movie. A book's a bit easier than TV, because I can skip ahead a few pates and, assuming things turn out okay, go back to skim it and, if that seems safe, read it properly. It just triggers an intense overstimulation of every panic hormone I have every few pages, because I empathise so deeply with characters--far more than I do with people, to be honest.
In any case, The Rosie Project's a great book. Super Aspergers Cocktail Man was, without a doubt, the highlight of the book for me. I want him running my local bar. And then I want time to be able to go there. :P
I was a little put off by the love relationship--I've always been dubious about incompatibility so strong that it's love. Then again, I do understand that Hubby and I are weird, in the fact that we are so very close to identical in our outlooks and what, as it turns out, is more of a Vulcan love grown from and strengthened by logic and convergent neural networks than one that could be found in the pages of... well, pretty much any story ever. I don't think I've ever managed to covey to anyone how awesome it is to be in a relationship that's as close to narcicisstic as you can get outside clonecest. But I did like Rosie and Don's love relationship anyway, mainly because of the dancing scene. That was... well, it was for me the best scene in the story for showing that Rosie really did love him for his craziness as much as he loved her for hers. Even if I had to read it backwards to make my adrenaline behave.
Technically, it was beautiful. I can never write humour, and there was a great deal of sly commentary going on that didn't exactly go over Don's head, but that he just didn't get emotionally. I love the way an inadequate narrator allows you to draw a big scene or memory in a few crucial details that wakes up the entire scene in the reader's head, without the narrator running the risk of getting too tell-y, because even if they are telling, they're telling the wrong things. And I love the way an inadequate narrator allows you to build suspense, where you can cue the reader in to what's about to happen to make them squirm, and still take the narrator by surprise. I'm unfortunately just too squeamish when there's embarrassment on the line.
Great book, well worth a read. Unless you're like me, you probably won't need a cushion to hide under. :)