Bridget Jones’s Diary

It had been too long since I listened to the podcast Sentimental Garbage for the last time, especially since I had loved The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets. The host and her guests have a way of making me excited about starting a book, and that's what happened when I listened to their episode on Bridget Jones’s Diary. I felt deeply behind having never read or seen this English phenomenon. So there you have it, I've sorted out the "book" side of things this week.

Summary

Bridget Jones is a rather ordinary single woman in her thirties, except that she is hilarious. She has a normal job, a tiresome mother, obsesses about her weight, smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and is beginning to think she'll never find the right man. Her boss, who she's obsessed with, is leading her on, and her mother insists on matching her with Marc Darcy, a much too handsome and rich family friend whom she barely knows. She tells her life story in a journal that she apparently carries around with her and to her friends, who are also single and ready to have a Bloody Mary with her at any time of the day or night.

Impressions

This book is a bit dated, it was published in 1996 (I was one): one of the scenes that made me laugh the most was the one where Bridget fights with her tape player to record a show, and I only understood about 2% of the references in the book. One particularly striking aspect is Bridget's obsession with her weight. Every day she keeps track of her weight and how she reacts to her weight and how many calories she takes in, it's sadly funny:

9st 5 (great – turned into lard mountain for interview, also have spot), alcohol units 0, cigarettes many, calories 1575 (but threw up so effectively 400, approx.)

Bridget Jone’s Diary, Monday 14 August

That, plus the fact that it's written in British English that I'm officially unfamiliar with, meant that at first I wasn't sure I was going to get hooked. Until I started laughing in the subway, people started looking at me and I still couldn't stop. Then I said to myself, "That's it, I fell for it".

There is nothing revolutionary about this book: or rather, not anymore. Its success at the time was surely due to the fact that the diary of an awkward girl with ordinary aspirations and ordinary challenges was unprecedented. As the New York Times put it, Helen Fielding made Bridget Jones the best friend of hundreds of thousand women.

So I had a great time, and on top of that, I hear the movie is very good. I'm already looking forward to it.