43 pages • 1 hour read
Graeme SimsionThe Rosie Effect
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 24-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary
Don and his male friends stop at a bar and share secrets. Gene discloses that he’s slept with far fewer women than he lets people assume; he thinks Claudia will be less interested in him if she knows the truth. Don is struck that telling the truth might not save Gene’s marriage. Dave’s secret is that he and Sonia used donated sperm to get pregnant through IVF. He worries about being less invested in the child because of Gene’s evolutionary theory about fathers only being attached to biological offspring. George confides to Don that he feels responsible for his son’s drug addiction, as he encouraged him to experiment. Upon reflecting on his friends’ secrets, Don insists that Gene contact his son Carl. Later, he learns Rosie already attended her second ultrasound appointment; she continues to believe he isn’t interested in the baby. Don asks Rosie about their baby’s gender, but she asked not to know. He feels the baby kick.
Chapter 25 Summary
Rosie feels she did not do well on her thesis exams; Don wonders if cognitive impairment in pregnancy has evolutionary value, while Gene asks about Rosie’s feelings. She invites Gene to dinner, despite Don having planned a special dinner. At the restaurant, Don again offends Loud Woman, the actress he didn’t serve at the bar, who does appear to be pregnant. Rosie is thinking about returning home to Melbourne, Australia.
Chapter 26 Summary
Don realizes Rosie is planning to end their marriage and focuses on acquiring fatherhood skills. Gene thinks she might be repeating her childhood pattern of being raised by a single parent. Claudia, a psychologist, thinks she is looking for idealized love because of father-related issues, and explicitly tells Don that she herself is seeing someone else. Later, he learns from the Lesbian Mothers Project that female and male caregivers tend to stimulate infants in different ways. The dean applauds his persistence with the project. Rosie plans a party for her study group, and Don insists on attending.
Chapter 27 Summary
Don notifies his family that his father’s designed soundproof crib arrived, but he hasn’t shown it to Rosie yet. He provides beer and cocktails for her study group, and George performs music. One of Rosie’s classmates confides that Don is more interesting than they expected; overall, Rosie’s classmates think she is eccentric for getting two degrees and thinking a baby won’t affect her studies. The one classmate suggests she is trying to defer her entrance to medical school because she is reluctant to do clinicals, which would require her to interact with patients. Don learns Inge rejected Gene’s advances because she does not have romantic interest in him. He tries to help Rosie, but she again rejects his help. He is asked to return to the bar, and takes satisfaction in serving cocktails.
Chapter 28 Summary
Don accompanies Rosie to a prenatal class, and she is embarrassed by his clinical knowledge but continued inability to read social cues. However, Lydia admits to him that “We do need people like you” (251). She reveals she lost a patient due to postpartum psychosis: The mother killed her infant and then died by suicide. The husband never noticed anything wrong, which is why Lydia was hypervigilant about Don’s insensitivity. She says having a husband who doesn’t notice his wife’s distress would be worse than having no support at all.
Chapter 29 Summary
Don reviews his traits and is particularly worried about his empathy. He creates a spreadsheet, and his negatives outweigh his positives. Rosie admits she got pregnant without consulting Don and didn’t think through the consequences. He fears having to support Rosie from afar as a sperm donor, rather than her accepting him as their child’s father: “My life would revert to the way it was prior to Rosie. […] It would be worse for knowing that it had once been even better” (256). Don asks to move in with Dave and Sonia. Rosie says there is someone else who loves her, and Don thinks it is Stefan.
Chapter 30 Summary
Don creates a financial system for Dave’s business and enlists help from Sonia, who is an accountant. He discovers Dave is owed more than $50,000. Sonia challenges Don if he is going to let a spreadsheet, or someone else, decide if he gets to be with Rosie and their baby.
Chapter 31 Summary
Don arranges dinner at a fancy restaurant to win Rosie back. As he returns to his apartment, he meets a man whom he deduces is George’s son—nicknamed “the Prince.” Don foregoes dinner with Rosie to help the Prince, whom he suspects is considering death by suicide. Gene helps Don locate George, and the Prince reunites with his father.
Chapters 24-31 Analysis
In a moment of irony, Don masks at Rosie’s party and learns her classmates regard her as unconventional, if not strange, due to her ambition. Don plays to his strengths by researching nutrition and childbirth, designing baby gear, and speaking up at a prenatal meeting—but these efforts embarrass Rosie, who is admittedly struggling with pregnancy and other stressors. Her resistance mirrors that of the Lesbian Mothers Project: Two of the project’s administrators are determined to produce their preferred finding, albeit for an understandable reason, but Don insists on objectivity. Despite sharing his wife’s ambition, holding a PhD and professorship in genetics, he is reduced to mixing cocktails at her party.
Both Claudia’s new relationship and Inge’s rejection of Gene mirror and intensify Don’s fear of Rosie leaving him. While Rosie believes he is unequipped to be a father, he has successfully supported Gene’s children and likely saves George’s suicidal son by staying with him, even if it means sacrificing his dinner with Rosie. Moreover, in using his skills to create a financial system for Dave, he likely saves his and Sonia’s marriage—ironic as his own marriage is falling apart. Don and his male friends’ night of secrets increases tension because while different, these secrets highlight the difficulties of Parent-Child Relationships. Gene exaggerates his sexual history to increase his appeal, instead of focusing on reality (i.e., his daughter’s and son’s need of him), Dave worries about bonding with his non-biological child, and George encouraged his son to experiment with drugs—which led to his addiction. Meanwhile, Lydia’s experience with a deceased patient’s detached husband is what led her to judge Don, which she finally acknowledges in this section. Still, Don fears his struggle to read cues is equivalent to this husband’s neglect.
In positing the logical and the emotional as contradictory, the novel questions the consequences of intuition. Don is accused of being insensitive, but Rosie displays insensitivity in choosing to cease her birth control without his input. While he keeps secrets for fear of distressing her, she is also keeping secrets from him. Upon learning Gene’s sexual history, he wonders if deception is an innate part of marriage, and perhaps relationships in general. Don makes a spreadsheet to evaluate his potential as a father, to parse logic and emotions—but as shown through the Lesbian Mothers Project, love is difficult to quantify. His friends urge him to rely on intuition rather than research or professionals like Lydia, without understanding his perspective. Likewise, Rosie is his wife, someone who should understand him, but extends little to no grace due to her own issues.
