Bridget Jones's Diary

Helen Fielding

I've watched (and reviewed) the film and enjoyed it so I was looking forward to this book and my overall reaction is that I did ... ish!

I think the phrase that seems to adorn a large number of books these days " ... by a thirty something ... " is offputting now. Bridget Jones, though, is a thirty something something!

The biggest problem with this book is that it kept reminding me of Adrian Mole. Adrian Mole really is the role model for diaries like this and any attempt at writing one must take that into account.

Bridget tramps her way through life and in the end she gets the man she has been so desperately looking for: I won't spoil it by saying which man that is! Along the way we are regaled with the kind of facts that someone like me revels in: the number of cigarettes smoked, the number of calories stuffed down one's neck, the number of 1471 phone calls made ... although I have to say that for much of the book I ignored these daily counts. It must be very sad of me to record that just as I thought of the spiffing ruse of adding up all the calories and cigarettes and so on that Bridget had recorded (honest, I really thought of doing that), she did it for me ... there is a summary page at the end of the diary of all of that nonsense!

You can see from my review of the film spawned by this book that it was a film of two halves. The same cannot be said of this book. The book is much better than the film. There is no burbling Hugh Grant to get in the way for a start. The relationships are radically different in the book: both friends and lovers. The storyline is more complex in the book and it is all the better for that.

I think that if the author had written a novel rather than a diary I would have scored it more highly. Apart from the Adrian Mole comparisons, I have to say that I did find some of the entries far too contrived and wondered whether Bridget Jones really did have the mental stamina and purpose to write out extensive dialogue and prose at the end of one of her tortuous days. The characterisation also left me wondering when on earth Bridget could ever write a diary of such proportions and complexity. That's not to say Bridget is intellectually incapable of composing her thoughts, of course, as she is a graduate of one of Britain's fine Universities!

That is why I liked it ... ish!

© Duncan Williamson

11 January 2003