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Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
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Reviews of Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
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In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget
confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating
poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat
units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74
pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken
New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget
goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of
a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a
short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be
nonexistent.
At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel,
the
thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome
but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance,
"get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can
survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full
of
"Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow
"Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned,
"We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going?
Still having sex?'"
This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year
of
performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and
living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her
twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a
chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself
spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic
freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London
Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In
strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter
side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything
from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when
she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford
of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine.
On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw
up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried
--This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
Buy Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding at Amazon by clicking here
The New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Gleick
It would be a shame to spend too much time searching for meaning in a
book that's this much fun to zip through, but we're going to be hearing
a
lot about Bridget--and Fielding--in the coming months, so here goes.
People will be passing around copies of Bridget Jones's Diary for a
reason: it captures neatly the way modern women teeter between "I am
woman" independence and a pathetic girlie desire to be all things to all
men. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jennifer Weiner
[Y]ou'll be hanging on her every breathless, self-loathing utterance ...
hoping, as you'd hope for a friend, that she'll find happiness, true love,
and a way to eat Milk Tray chocolates without beating herself up
afterward. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
National Review, Norah Vincent
...may prove to be one of the most stinging indictments of feminism to
come along in a while. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of
this title
From Booklist , July 19, 1998
In the wake of the hit TV show Ally McBeal, the market for stories
about the lives of hip single women continues to boom. Now British
journalist Fielding, in her first novel, which is already a best-seller
in
Britain, blows all the competition right out of the water. Wry diarist
Bridget Jones details a year in her life and her endless search for "inner
poise." Such poise is hard to come by when you've invited 10 people to
a
five-course dinner party, and the velouteof tomato comes out blue
because detergent was left in the blender. But Bridget is a master at
turning humiliation into ever funnier riffs on everything from date
preparation ("Being a woman is worse than being a farmer--there's so
much harvesting and crop spraying to be done") to the pleasures of
Yuletide ("I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance,
warmth. . . . It makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime,
where at least all the women are social outcasts"). Brimming with a
deliciously irreverent sense of humor and a keen sense of women's
deepest insecurities, Bridget Jones's Diary is a must-read. Joanne
Wilkinson
Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
From Kirkus Reviews , May 15, 1998
Newspaper columnist Fielding's first effort, a bestseller in Britain, lives
up
to the hype: This year in the life of a single woman is closely observed
and laugh-out-loud funny. Bridget, a thirtysomething with a midlevel
publishing job, tempers her self-loathing with a giddy (if sporadic) urge
toward self-improvement: Every day she tallies cigarettes smoked,
alcohol unitsconsumed, and pounds gained or lost. At Una Alconbury's
New Year's Day Curry Buffet, her parents and their friends hover as
she's introduced to an eligible man, Mark Darcy. Mark is wearing a
diamond-patterned sweater that rules him out as a potential lust object,
but Bridget's reflexive rudeness causes her to ruminate on her own
undesirability and thus to binge on chocolate Christmas-tree decorations.
But in the subsequent days, she cheers herself up with fantasies of Daniel,
her boss's boss, a handsome rogue with an enticingly dissolute air. After
a
breathless exchange of e-mail messages about the length of her skirt,
Daniel asks for her phone number, causing Bridget to crown herself sex
goddess. . . until she spends a miserable weekend staring at her silent
phone. By chanting ``aloof, unavailable ice-queen'' to herself, she
manages to play it cool long enough to engage Daniel's interest, but once
he's her boyfriend, he spends Sundays with the shades pulled watching
TVand is quickly unfaithful. Meanwhile, after decades of marriage, her
mother acquires a bright orange suntan, moves out of the house, and
takes up with a purse-carrying smoothie named Julio. And so on. Bridget
navigates culinary disasters, mood swings, and scary publishing parties;
she cares for her parents, talks endlessly with her cronies, and maybe,
just maybe, hooks up with a nice boyfriend. Fielding's diarist raises
prickly insecurities to an art form, turns bad men into good anecdotes,
and shows that it is possible to have both a keen eye for irony and a
generous heart. (Film rights to Working Title; author tour) -- Copyright
©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers
to the hardcover edition of this title
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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!"
"Screamingly funny." --USA Today
"Bridget Jones is channeling something so universal and (horrifyingly)
familiar that readers will giggle and sigh with collective delight." --Elle
"Hilarious but poignant." --The Washington Post
Buy Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding at Amazon by clicking here
"This juicy diary tells the truth with a verve as appealing to men on Mars
as it is to Venusian women. A." --Entertainment Weekly
"An unforgettably droll character." --Newsweek
"Bridget's voice is dead-on . . . will cause readers to drop the book,
grope frantically for the phone and read it out loud to their best
girlfriends." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Fielding. . .has rummaged all too knowingly through the bedrooms,
closets, hearts and minds of women everywhere." --Glamour
"Good-bye Rules Girls, hello Singletons...Endearingly engaging." --The
New York Times Book Review
The publisher, Breene Farrington; BFarrington@penguin.com ,
May 12, 1998
Reviews of "Bridget Jones's Diary"
"It's hard to imagine a funnier book appearing anywhere this year."
--Publisher's Weekly, starred review
"Bridget Jones's Diary has made her the best friend of hundreds of
thousands of women..." --The New York Times
"Newspaper columnist Fielding's first effort, a bestseller in Britain,
lives
up to the hype: This year in the life of a single woman is closely observed
and laugh-out-loud funny...Fielding's diarist raises prickly insecurities
to
an art form, turns bad men into good anecdotes, and shows that it is
possible to have both a keen eye for irony and a generous heart."
--Kirkus Reviews
Buy Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding at Amazon by clicking here
"Helen Fielding is one of the funniest writers alive and Bridget Jones
is a
creation of comic genius." --Nick Hornby
"Even men will laugh." --Salman Rushdie
"In New York and beyond, women are lending purloined proofs of
Viking's American edition and British copies to friends with "you've got
to
read this" notes attached...Ally McBeal better watch her scrawny little
back--in June, Bridget Jones is coming to America." --Newsweek --This
text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
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arrow and select books,
type in Helen Fielding
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