Bridget Jones's Diary : A Novel by Helen Fielding

Amazon.com
Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, an unabashed riff on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, actually has more in common with Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Where Bridget keeps us apprised of her flawed but persistent attempts at self-improvement in a year's worth of diary entries, the morally upright Clarissa wrestles with her love for the devious Lovelace in very private letters to friends and family. With both heroines, we feel like the favored confidante of someone more interesting than we are.
Tennyson referred to Clarissa as a "large still book," and indeed, there's a stillness about most novels structured around letters and journals, no matter how lively the drama they expose. This may be why the audiocassette version of Bridget Jones's Diary sometimes seems shrill instead of earnest, petty instead of poignantly honest. As actress Tracie Bennett (Shirley Valentine) lifts Bridget Jones from the sanctity of the printed page, we find the cast of characters scratching at each other with the noisy exaggeration of a French farce.

To her credit, Bennett infuses the dailiness of Bridget's life with admirable energy, shifting from Bridget's raspiness to Perpetua's cackle to Sharon's screech to Daniel's sneer with the ease of a stand-up comic. And here's one cassette that doesn't suffer from abridgment. What went flying by in written form--the shorthand minutia, the inventory of calories, the fluctuating cigarette consumption--would have collapsed under the tedium of a faithful reading. Although it's a shame that the abridgment favors boyfriend frustrations over the restorative nights out with the girls, it mercifully gives short shrift to Bridget's relentlessly irritating mother. Even with this reshaping, the everywoman resonance of Bridget's ordinary life comes through intact--all the way through to its happy ending.
Book Description
Bridget Jones's Diary is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud account of a year in the life of a thirty-something Singleton on a permanent doomed quest for self-improvement. Caught between the joys of Singleton fun, and the fear of dying alone and being found three weeks later half eaten by an Alsatian; tortured by Smug Married friends asking, "How's your love life" with lascivious, yet patronizing leers, Bridget resolves to reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult and learn to program the VCR. With a blend of flighty charm, existential gloom, and endearing self-deprecation, the diary has touched a raw nerve with millions of readers the world round. Read it, laugh and crash your head onto the table before you cry, "Bridget Jones is me!"

About the Author
Helen Fielding was born in an industrial town in the north of England, studied at Oxford University, and went on to work in television at the BBC. Her first novel, Cause Celeb, was based on her experience while filming documentaries in Africa for Comic Relief. She now lives in London, after a spell as a newspaper journalist, and is hard at work on the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary. She is also working on the screenplay for the book, which is being made into a feature film by the producers of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Surely you know better than to ask whether she's married.

 

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