The Graeme Simson collection evokes whims

Is there a reader out there who didn’t find Don Tillman endearing? The Don Tillman I mean is Graeme Simsion’s character from his first novel, The Rosie Project. This screwball comedy was a hit and Simsion wrote a second, then a third Don and Rosie story.

The first of rosie Series made Simsion famous. Don and Rosie are such adorable characters that every reader has wanted to follow their lives. There was no mistaking the excitement of reading that first novel. The jokes were visual and hilarious, and mysteriously the author’s intelligence illuminated every page.

And every reader wondered if maybe the endearingly annoying Don was autobiographical. This new book might help with inquiries. Creative differences and other stories is an unusual collection of nine tracks written about the career of the industrious Simsion. Some are fiction, some written for newspapers, some commissioned, some as prize entries.

And just over half the book is a short novel, Creative Differences. It explores two opposing ways of writing a novel: detailed plotting or flying on your buttocks. Scott has the steel trap mind that solves problems and cracks jokes, Emily has access to the muses. They have been happily together, creatively and in life for three years, but difficulties arise with the arrival of Piper which they both want to use to release their own genius from his cage. Then there’s Gideon, a bankrupt publisher. A little man with a big brain.

Creative Differences was commissioned by Audible Australia and this required some research for Simsion. Obviously spoken voices would be appropriate, but he had to look for inspiration.

It was the Beatles white album this became the reference point for Simsion: 30 tracks, four voices and the creative differences that bands are known to break up, he writes in his introduction. I’m afraid all of this just slipped past me.

An idle thought crossed my mind: Is Simsion’s cleverness exaggerated? Followed by an equally inactive one: When does Clever tip into the smartass? Simsion’s qualities worked in the tenderly treated, emotionally thin rosie Novels, which makes for heady fun, but I want to say, “Hmm?” here. For my money that would work better than audible.

The nine tracks that make up the first half of the book are captivating. Confession in three parts, a story within a story about two generations of female doctors, is a direct descendant of O. Henry, shocking and satisfying. Other, Three encounters with the physicalShe became runner-up Age Short Story Contest 2013. A man runs his first marathon. He’s 51. He’s obsessed, even when his body is telling him to stop or he’s going to die. He will not.