This should
have been our selection for February 2015 at the Brown Bag Book Club.[1]
As
you can see from the citations below, this won an “unpublished” book award in Australia (?). The author sold the
movie rights {but no movie}. He did get
an Advanced Diploma of Screenwriting in 2013,
and when he wrote the sequel, he got, in 2014, a Diploma of Professional
Writing and Editing; both from
the University of Melborne. [This was not his undergraduate, but his graduate
school.]
I can’t recall what prompted me to
order this book – I actually bought it.
This is another entry into the
genre-world of O/C behavior comedies.
The protagonist is off the charts of “normal” and the reader is
encouraged to feel sympathetic as one might to a child with-learning
disabilities. Robin or Padma could
comment on what variations are being portrayed.
The plot line is a basic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl:
a romantic comedy.
Like Christopher Boone, the 15-year-old
narrator of Mark Haddon's 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time, he's appealing not just despite his eccentricities but because
of them. We read that book in this group
back in June 2005 (see next page for what I wrote then).
The O/C behavior just spices up an
otherwise standard R/C plotline that has been done for as long as I can
remember: movies like “It Happened One
Night”, or anything with Tracy and Hepburn; stage plays like with Burton
and Taylor. This is the basic essence of
writing for social communication – Conflict – Yin and Yang – Opposites Attract
– Salt and Pepper.
The
predictability of the storyline is only matched by our, the reader’s, capacity
to insatiably digest an infinite set of variations on this popular theme.
It’s
a fun read.
I
will offer up the paperback this Thursday in out book group.
The curious incident of the dog in the
night-time June
2005 Brown Bag
For me,
Christopher’s way of thinking is natural, obvious, and the only logical way to
view the world.
I took a
scientific and mathematical training path all through school and in my career
work. I look at the physical aspects of
the world through the lens of the laws of science, and I see the art and beauty
of the world through mathematics.
I could easily and
comfortably be just like him, except his behavior patterns have been
“socialized” out of me from birth.
His is the natural way to look at life.
Books like this
give one pause to stop and wonder about life.
Maybe that “retard” you’re either feeling sorry for or trying to trip is
the next Stephen Hawking¥, world’s greatest genius in
Cosmology. Christopher and Hawking have
different problems at the base of their “uniqueness” from other people. What they do have in common, though, is
focus. It does seem that people who are
lacking in some areas tend to focus their unused energy in other areas. For Hawking and Christopher, the areas are
mathematics and science.
I don’t want to
tread into the more religious aspects of life & death, but one lesson to be
appreciated from this cute short story is that all life is precious. No life is beyond exclusion from respect and
consideration and everyone needs to be given as many chances as possible to
succeed in their chosen areas. How do we
know who will be the next Stephen Hawking?
The other lesson
is that there is always hope for salvation from one’s demons, but it may take a
lifetime, as it will for the father who has murdered an innocent dog and lied
about a child’s mother, all caused by uncontrolled anger and jealous passion
I am also reminded
of the movie, “Liar, Liar,” Jim Carrey, 1997, where Fletcher Reede must speak
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It results in uncomfortable situations like
in our book, when the police sergeant wants Christopher to say that he didn’t
mean to hit the policeman, but he can’t say that because he did intend to hit
him and he can’t lie.
Part of the transition from childhood to adulthood is the graying of the
spaces between truths and lies. It seems
that full adulthood represents the ability to never quite tell the truth. The more respected and powerful the position:
politician, media person, corporate president, even President Of The United
States; the higher they go, the more these people have been seduced by the dark
side of the force. It is a sad
commentary that concomitant with the lengthening noses of those on top, is the
population’s willingness to accept the lies.
The truth is often
a bitter pill to swallow, but we’re better off to take it when the doctor
orders.
It was said of
Diogenes that throughout his life he "searched with a lantern in the
daylight for an honest man." And though Diogenes apparently did not find
an honest man, he had, in the process, "exposed the vanity and selfishness
of man." (The Chambers
Dictionary.)
[1] Simsion won the 2012
Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book, The Rosie Project. Text Publishing has sold the rights to the book internationally for over
$1.8m. The Rosie Project was published in Australia in January 2014, and
has since sold more than a million copies in over forty countries around the
world. The screenplay has been optioned to Sony
Pictures Entertainment. A sequel to The
Rosie Project, titled The Rosie Effect, was published on 24
September 2014 by Text Publishing.
Prior to
writing fiction he was an information systems consultant and wrote two books
and several papers about data-modelling. He established a consulting business
in 1982 and sold it in 1999. At that time Simsion Bowles and Associates
had over seventy staff. He co-founded a wine distribution business, Pinot
Now with Steven Naughton.
From 2002–2006,
as a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, he conducted
the largest published study of data modelling practitioners (489 participants,
most with substantial industry experience), to address the question 'Is data
modelling better characterized as description or design?' The research included
interviews with thought leaders, surveys of practitioners, and practical
modelling tasks.
He concluded
that, in contrast to the assumption implicit in most data modelling research,
data modelling is best characterized as a design discipline (the term design is
used in the broad sense of design theory, rather than its more narrow and
casual usage in the information systems field). His work was published as his
PhD thesis Data Modeling: Description or Design, University of Melbourne, 2006
and in Data Modeling Theory and Practice (Technics Publications, 2007).
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