I tend not to read much commercial mainstream fiction, for many reasons. I certainly avoid it if the Hype Machine insists I read it. So I was unfamiliar with ‘The Rosie Project’ until this morning.
I can’t give a full review of a story unless I read all of it, and I managed only a few sample chapters online. So this is not a review.
This is an observation.
I’ve seen better portrayals of likely autism-spectrum characters on ‘Royal Pains’ (Dr. Jeremiah Sacani) and ‘The Big Bang Theory’ (Sheldon Cooper – upon whom Rosie’s male protagonist appears to be based.)
I’m not surprised by the rumor this was a screenplay before it was a book, or that it’s going to be a movie soon. As a chick-flick in manuscript form, I’m sure it’s reasonably enjoyable beach or airport reading. As a movie it will be the same.
It is not a manual for real-life friendship or romantic relationships with people anywhere on the autism spectrum, any more than ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is a safe, sane & consensual manual for BDSM lifestyle practices.
So, for the readers who acquired life lessons from ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ and ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ – don’t. Just don’t. Don’t chase after that geeky, charming, painfully reserved, didactic, and fussy engineer/doctor/scientist/whatever and expect him or her to change according to your whims. If they really have Asperger’s, all you are saying to them is: “I hate one of the bedrock parts of your personality, the thing that you probably cannot change at all. And I won’t love you unless you do, or at least try.”
Yeah, try that.