Bridget Jones’s Diary

Meet Bridget Jones—a 30-something Singleton who is certain she would have all the answers if she could:

a. lose 7 pounds

b. stop smoking

c. develop Inner Poise

“123 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)…”

Bridget Jones’ Diary is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget’s permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement — a year in which she 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.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and — like millions of readers the world round — you’ll find yourself shouting, “Bridget Jones is me!”

Summary from goodreads

I’m not a big New Year’s Eve person. I never have been. So, rather than going out, I have always been in the camp of people who stays home, watches movies and drinks mulled wine. NYE for me and my tribe tends to mean British rom coms from the early 2000s, specifically Love Actually followed by Bridget Jones’s Diary. So long as Hugh Grant is either fighting or dancing, we’re in.

I’ve read Bridget Jones’s Diary before, but years ago when I was still in my teens. I figured I was well overdue for a reread – especially now that I am, sort of, an adult.

Though it is an 90s as can be – at one point Bridget is battling with her VCR, and there’s a lot of discussion about calling 1471 to see if you’ve missed a phone call while you were out (landlines! Lol!) – Helen Fielding’s comic take on middle class single womanhood remains very funny in 2018. It’s kind of like Georgia Nicholson, but for adults.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is a masterfully crafted satire that takes shots at everything from the self-help industry, to feminism and TV news and, most of all, dating. The book manages to be even more ridiculous than the movie – at one point, Bridget’s mother is on the run from the law – and though he isn’t in it as much as I would like, Mark Darcy somehow even more attractive. If you’re into the whole stern man thing, which I very much am.

The book chronicles Bridget stumbling through successes, failures and embarrassments (favourite moment: when Bridget runs into her recently ex-boyfriend, Daniel at an art exhibition and tries to escape by running into a portaloo that turns out to be part of the exhibit ‘I burst into the cubicle and was just about to get on with it when I realized that the toilet was actually a moulding of the inside of a toilet, vacuum-packed in plastic. Then Daniel put his head around the door. “Bridge, don’t wee on the Installation, will you?” he said, and closed the door again.’ ).

It’s a sweet, funny, cringe-worthy and relatable read that I would recommend to any women I know. Lately it’s been difficult being a female-identifying person. The news is full of stories of sexual harassment, assault and coercion, and, of course, the inevitable #MeToo backlash, that the world can feel like kind of hostile place sometimes. It was really nice, in between cocktails with friends having the is it all men though? I know it’s supposed to be not all men but it’s really starting to feel like all men conversations, to pick up a book whose only real aim was to make me laugh.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to let yourself laugh, and Bridget Jones’s Diary will certainly help you do that.

PS I also highly recommend The Edge of Reason. I haven’t read it since I was 19 and working in Caffe Nero, but I remember it clearly because one day I missed my bus to work because it was making me laugh so much. That was a fun one to explain to my boss.