Helen Fielding started writing the story of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single woman living in London, as a column in the magazine ”The Independent” in 1995. After that Bridget’s charming character has demanded a wider audience; Fielding has published three books starring her unconventional heroine and two of them have been adapted for the big screen with top actors such as Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. The succes was predictable since Bridget Jones is, without a doubt, the queen of all single women. And probably single men too.
The book I will be reviewing is ”Bridget Jones’s Diary”, but I’ll say a few words about the franchise as a whole.
You could say ”Bridget Jones’s Diary” is ”Pride and Prejudice” adapted to the modern day. Helen Fielding has openly admitted that she ”stole” the plot from Jane Austen, but she doesn’t think Austen will mind (since she happens to be dead).
Many of the characters are actually modern versions of the characters from PaP; Bridget Jones, as the protagonist, is obviously Elizabeth Bennet; Bridget’s main love interest Mark Darcy is Mr. Darcy; her slimy boss Daniel Cleaver is Wickham; and her parents are Mr. And Mrs. Bennet, even though Bridget’s mum Pamela’s storyline also has shades of Elizabeth Bennet’s little sister Lydia’s story.
Bridget, as a character, differs very much from Elizabeth. The protagonist of the Jane Austen novel is more sensible and less lovesick than Bridget, whereas the latter spends her time reading books about self-growth, getting along with men and getting by without men, smoking cigarettes, obsessing over her boss, drinking, discussing relationships with her friends and counting calories. Still Bridget and Elizabeth get thrown in similar situations with absolutely impossible mother (”Bridget, I’m not listening to any more of this. Auntie Una was just saying the other day: if you’d had something a bit more bright and cheerful on at the turkey curry buffet Mark Darcy might have shown a bit more interest. Nobody wants a girlfriend who wanders round looking like someone from Auschwitz, darling”), misleading men and runaway family members.
Bridget also loves ”Pride and Prejudice” and is in love with Mr. Darcy. It’s kind of amusing, when you remember that in the filmatization of the novel Bridget’s love interest is played by Colin Firth, who also plays Mr. Darcy in the TV-serie adaption of the Jane Austen novel (Colin Firth is THE Mr. Darcy and I know most of people will agree with me on this).
Bridget’s friends, mostly Jude, Sharon and Tom, are a big part of the story. Each of them have their own problems when it comes to romance, but they are always ready to support each other and criticise their boyfriends. Actually they all have a really good reason to blame them since somehow they have successed to attract the worst kind of men one can possibly find. For example, Jude’s boyfriend (named ”Vile Richard” by the friend group) has bad commitment issues and makes poor Jude believe that she’s the one being co-dependent and needy for wanting simple things such as a shared holiday with her boyfriend. Other boyfriends aren’t much better and that sort of makes you think about the whole picture. I understand that this is supposed to be a satirised version of single life in London, but is it acceptable in the name of satire that none of Bridget’s friends end up having a healthy relationship by the end of the first book?
The book is written in a shape of a diary, as you can tell from the title. Bridget is mostly a reliable narrator but she doesn’t always understand everything that’s going on even though the reader will understand it all.
Often there is a small statistics of Bridget’s ”accomplishments” in the beginning of the diary entries. Usually they contain Bridget’s current weight, alcohol units of the day, cigarettes she has smoked and something extra. For example: ”9st 1, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 1/2 (fat chance of any more), calories: God knows, minutes spent wanting to kill mother 188 (conservative estimate)”.
Here is one of the biggest problems I have with this book; I understand that women have a huge pressure to look thin, but in what world a woman who weighs 9 stones (about 57 kilos) is fat? I would accept it if it was all in Bridget’s head, but there are some snarks about her informed chubbiness. Is she really, really short of what am I missing here?
As I have probably made clear, I’m familiar with the Bridget Jones franchise, but I haven’t read this book in English before. It was nice to read it in the original language. It was delightfully ”British”, but not in a snobbish way. Many things made more sense when not translated, even thought the Finnish translator had done a great job with this book the first time I read it.
I really like this book and I adore Bridget’s character. This diary is the Bible of all the single people and even thought it may sound weird, Bridget is a suprisingly good role model.
She makes lots of mistakes and is often mislead. For example, when she’s with Daniel Cleaver, who is cheating on her: Even the reader may think that Bridget’s the stupid one, that she should have seen that coming. Then we stop to think about it and we see that Daniel is the one who is doing the wrong thing. Bridget has done nothing wrong. It’s easy to think a similar situation from your own life and understand that you did nothing wrong. People are allowed to make mistakes.
Bridget isn’t gloriously beautiful. She drinks way too much and smokes like a chimney. She’s reckless and not the most clever woman you’ll ever meet. That’s why it’s so easy for us to see ourselves in her; she’s flawed in and out.
It’s good that we see ourselves in her, since she’s, despite or because of all her flaws, absolutely loveable.
”Oh my God. Just took lid off casserole to remove carcasses. Soup is bright blue.”
– poor Bridget trying to cook