Bridget Jones's Diary
by Helen Fielding
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Book Summary Information
Author: Helen FieldingEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-04-01
ISBN: 0141000198
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Bridget Jones's Diary
Book Review: Funny, dramatic, serious
Summary: 5 Stars
Most novels with a female central character do not portray her as much less than ideal. Such is not the case here. Bridget Jones is a little beyond the usual marriage age, and she feels it because people keep reminding her that her clock is ticking. She is literate but not always competent. Her love life is a mess. She worries about her weight, her smoking, her drinking, and just about everything else. In fact, she keeps a meticulous record of her failures.
Often she is funny, seeing the foolishness of it all. And sometimes she is in despair and insecure. She is always a social and physical klutz. And these flaws in her make her come alive. It is almost, at times, as if we are reading an actual young woman's diary.
The story moves slowly, sinuously, as Bridget tries to cope. Her parents' marriage is falling apart. Her friends are as mixed up as Bridget is. Her work at the publishing company is complicated by the fact that she is in love with the man in charge, and he seems to be a user of women. But slowly Bridget comes to realize.... Well, read the book.
There are several ties between this book and Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." In fact, "Diary" is, in effect the Austen book, with the heroine being a present-day English young woman, rather than one from the Regency period. Some of the other ties include Mr. Darcy, parallel figures in both novels; actual references to the actors who played in the BBC series on the Austen book--among others.
This was made into a fine movie, one that did justice to the novel, without following it exactly. Renee Zellweger (of Texas) would seem an unlikely actress to play a born and bred Londoner, but she is perfect in the role.
Summary of Bridget Jones's Diary
"130 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds overnight? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier (repulsive, horrifying notion)); alcohol units 2 (excellent) cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow); number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)?"
This laugh-out-loud chronicle charts a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a single girl on a permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement--in which she resolves to: visit the gym three times a week not merely to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult, and not fall for any of the following: misogynists, megalomaniacs, adulterers, workaholics, chauvinists or perverts. And learn to program the VCR. Caught between her Singleton friends, who are all convinced they will end up dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian, and the Smug Marrieds, whose dinner parties offer ever-new opportunities for humiliation, Bridget struggles to keep her life on an even keel (or at least afloat). Through it all, she will have her readers helpless with laughter and shouting, "BRIDGET JONES IS ME!"
In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74 pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be nonexistent.
At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel, the thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance, "get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full of "Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow "Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned, "We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going? Still having sex?'"
This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year of performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine. On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried
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