THIS IS A GOOD BOOK SHUT UP. Seriously though I enjoyed it for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, it’s funny, and although it’s really, really light, the humor still shines through. The book is written as a sort-of epistolary (i.e. as a series of letters) in that it is, well, a diary. One of the things that the movie version loses, actually, is the daily weight and smoking record which kind of categorizes Bridget Jones’ general mood throughout the proceedings. The other main thing that it loses is the closing scene which involves Jones sending drunken emails to all of her friends. There was really no reason to put that into the movie but hey, it’s funny so I’ll allow it.
The other reason why the book ought to be read in its own right is that the very casting of Colin Firth as Mister Darcy is a callback to a pretty major meme in the book itself, which is Bridget Jones watching a particular scene from the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice over and over again in order to see Mr. Firth topless. The fact that he’s actually in the movie is enough to make your head hurt a little bit. The fact that the book itself is essentially a 1990s-era update of Pride (Firth’s character’s name is even Mark Darcy, a callback to Mister Darcy from the Jane Austen novel) is enough to make your head hurt a bit more.
I wish I could recommend Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason as much as I could this book but it gets just a bit more silly; the success of the novel, I guess, led Fielding to give Jones a level of success that isn’t really foretold in the first book, and on top of that there’s a sense that the original love triangle needed to be brought back. I wouldn’t *quite* say that Edge of Reason is to Diary what Hangover II was to The Hangover but it’s close enough that a parallel could be made.
But that’s nothing against this book. It’s not going to teach you new things about life. Bridget Jones is maybe a bit too silly to be a realistic character but she does in a sense represent a side of all of us which some of us attempt to sublimate but which nonetheless exists. Anyway, her constant fantasizing about “minibreaks” is pretty funny to this American; I have to admit that I had no idea what a “minibreak” was before I read this. I also didn’t know that if your name is Sharon and you are British your nickname is often “Shazzer”. That is awesome beyond words, I’m sorry. I want to move to England and find a woman named Sharon to befriend just to experience this. Actually, come to think of it I have an aunt named Sharon. She isn’t English though. I think I’d still have to move there and affect an accent to really pull that off.
This is definitely a book for the lighter half of your reading load, something to read to let your brain cool off after A Brief History of Time or The Ancestor’s Tale. I found myself enjoying this book in much the same way that I enjoyed High Fidelity; although it’s not really in the same league as that tome, it’s fun enough to warrant the price of the paper. And it’s a quick enough read that you might find yourself flipping through it again in a year or two.
A Book A Day, That's All We Ask 