Finished Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Actually meant to take Helen Somebody-Else but forgot the last name and ended up with Fielding. But no regrets. Enjoyed it.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Having finished the book, the first thought that came to my mind was can your story and your life and your self be extracted from your diary? I wondered now about my diary. I didn’t think anything you write to a diary ever made a lot of sense. You wrote when you wanted to talk, about yourself or what bugs you, or maybe for no reason. But all of it from page 1 to last, would it define your life? The answer, I found is yes, at least w.r.t. BJ. Hmm, point to be taken care of: be careful on what you write to your diary, no knowing what readers may come across it.

Having seen part of the movie, I was imagining Renée Zellweger’s voice and looks when I started the book. But as it proceeded I could no longer picture Renée Zellweger somehow. Cause Bridget defined a character, she had an individuality about her no preconceived image can satisfy. Not that she was an unusually strong character who went to save the country. She was an ordinary single woman of 30s something living in England, having her own circle of friends and cribbing about not having a boyfriend. She wrote to her diary like to another friend, only a little more transparently maybe. But the character she was in the presence of others and in her diary did not leave any doubt we were watching the same Bridget Jones in action. Meaning she had no dual characters, or one to place in front of some people. She was Bridget all the way and all the time. That’s why I liked her.

The author dedicates the book with this one line “To my mother for not being like Bridget’s”. And boy, that’s one woman anyone can do without! Her Dad, and all her friends are spoken about by Bridget, and though she doesn’t write a one page introduction about Dad, Tom, Jude or Sharon you get the gist of what each person was like from her description of the moments with them. So without any effort, the author manages to describe the characters to the reader in the most natural way – from a girl’s diary of ramblings! Easily her close friends and then less close friends come into limelight with her simple words and narrations.

The most that comes out is the character of Bridget herself. One has a tendency to write about oneself in a way which made a reader think nothing one did can be wrong, one was someone to be sympathized. Bridget does this, but she also shares an honesty with her diary which brought out her whole self, in no attempt to paint herself a saint. She was happy when she was happy and miserable when she was miserable, it was as simple as that.

And oh, there was humor. All the way, there was humor. The author does that so easily, that’s what I really liked. It was not like the book was written in a hurry, and Fielding remembered there was no humor, so ran back through the pages and injected a few lines here and there. Nothing fits in, not humor, not anything else, if it didn’t give the feel of coming as one single package instead of many small packages which tried to stick together. And Bridget Jones did come in one single package.

Quoting a typical Bridget conversation just to give a feel of it:-

I got in the lift to go out for a sandwich and found Daniel in there with Simon from Marketing, talking about footballers being arrested for throwing matches. “Have you heard about this, Bridget?” said Daniel.
“Oh yes,” I lied, groping for an opinion. “Actually, I think it’s all rather petty. I know it’s a thuggish way to behave, but as long as they didn’t actually set light to anyone I don’t see what all the fuss is about”

And oh how could I forget, each page of her diary started with a few statistics. Her weight, her alcohol or cigarette consumption, calories, and sometimes other things she thought needed mentioning, like the number of hours she slept. She is given a fat figure and the poor girl (can’t somehow call her woman or lady though she is in her 30s!) tries to burn off that fat through excessive dieting, but aptly fails to most of the time. Still, like her friend Tom points out when she announces the number of calories in every junk food, like a robot, she is sick, and obsessive about it!

And the men in her life! Don’t know why I chose to talk about that at the end. They were important you see. Cause her thoughts are centered on worrying about them or not having one of them to talk about! All her friends and family took care to not let a reader forget that for one second. She didn’t have a man, that part was clear. This is at the beginning of course. Men roll into her life in the form of her boss Daniel Cleaving, whom I still picture as Hugh Grant, and Mark Darcy whom I am trying to give a different image than Colin Firth’s. And maybe since I already knew the story, I did not like Daniel from the beginning. The way Bridget writes about him too, gives the impression he is just a rat taking the poor girl for a long ride! That is, even though it is only through her we know about the other characters, we feel she was wrong about this guy, she will know that soon. Claps for Fielding again for letting the reader see through that! Mark Darcy, if anything else, has got character. That’s the first thing I felt about him, that he has character. He defined it and he followed it. Great guy, Mark.

And just as I finish talking about Darcy, I can’t help mentioning this. A little bit of Pride and Prejudice here? Bridget mentions the book herself and that’s when it really struck me. Hullo! Were we reading a modern Elizabeth’s story? Ok Bridget doesn’t have sisters. But the first guy turning out to be the bad guy, and the second guy even coming up with the same name Darcy. And both Darcys having similar reasons for disliking the first guy! Hmm!

What I didn’t like about the book. Hmm can’t complain about too much cribbing, cause that’s what you do in a diary. Infact, that stops you from complaining about anything. Cause there is no set pattern or hard and fast rules to follow in a diary. You can’t say there is too much of this or that. But there must have been, maybe at some points, a little too detailed about stuff no one cared about, cause I felt my attention wandering here and there. But then again, that could be because I was simply not understanding what she was talking about or coming from a different country failing to comprehend certain UK-specific details.

That’s it then. Hope I did a good job with Bridget. Last word before I go, don’t take this for a “girly” book please! That would be an insult to the author, to Bridget and to me!