By Helen Fielding
Read: October 2009, repeatedly since ~2002
Rating: v.v.v.v.g.
Bridget Jones is a classic of our time. She can’t be anything but. Plenty of people have gone on and on about how this book changed womens’ literature to chick lit (for better or worse). When I first read it, I was sixteen and trapped on a 17+ hour flight from Cape Town to New York. I needed something to read, something that wasn’t bloody farking Fitzgerald. In the Jo’burg airport, I found Bridget Jones, and its sequel, The Edge of Reason. I read them both, and landed at La Guardia just a few chapters shy of finishing EOR. These books saved my sanity.
Screw the cultural and literary analyses. Bridget Jones is funny.
Miss Jones is a 29 year old Singleton, beginning her diary on the first of January. She has resolved to drink less, smoke less, lose weight, be a better person, and get a boyfriend (else will be doomed to lifetime of spinsterdom, only to die alone and be found three weeks later, half eaten by an Alsatian). In her neurotic, and utterly useless way, Bridget stumbles through a year of mishaps and fuckwits.
Sublime British comedy. Touches the raw nerve of worry that every single woman feels to some degree, no matter how young, old, confident, or feminist. Unabashed indulgence. How can you not love this book!?
All right, I do see how you could be a bit annoyed. Bridget is a bit of a twit. She hangs on to Daniel Cleaver for way too long. But she’s still SO FUNNY. And it only gets better.
The movie did a good job of translating the book, but, of course, there’s nothing quite like the book. There never is.
The great irony of ironies is this. In the book, Bridget and her friends swoon over Colin Firth’s Pride and Prejudice. So, who plays the magnificent Mark Darcy in Bridget’s movie? Colin Firth! Hugh Grant, who plays Daniel Cleaver, gets a mention as well.
Lift a glass and happily shout “Bastard fuckwits!” to the heavens. Bridget is a classic, and will be making women laugh and feel less insane for decades to come.
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