[amazon_image id=”014028009X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Bridget Jones’s Diary[/amazon_image]I finally picked up [amazon_link id=”014028009X” target=”_blank” ]Bridget Jones’s Diary[/amazon_link] by Helen Fielding this week. My NaNoWriMo novel is going to be chick lit, and I decided I really needed to read the mother of all chick lit novels before I started writing. I actually have not seen the first Bridget Jones movie, although I have seen the second. I don’t know what took me so long to read this book. It was v.g.

So, Bridget is a thirty-something singleton in London. She begins the year with a list of resolutions and chronicles the events of her life in her diary, beginning almost every post with an update on her current weight, number of drinks consumed, and number of cigarettes smoked (sometimes with number of calories consumed, number of lottery tickets purchased, and 1471 calls—something like caller ID). Over the course of the year, Bridget dates her skeevy boss, Daniel Cleaver, and keeps bumping into Mark Darcy, a barrister her mother tries to set her up with at the New Year’s Day party they both attend at the beginning of the year. Bridget’s mother flips out and leaves her father for Latin lover Julio. Bridget winds up leaving her job after she and Daniel break up for a more satisfying, if somewhat challenging job in TV. Should I say how it ends? Or isn’t the moratorium on spoiling the ending on this one over? At any rate, everything ends happily, if not for everyone (Bridget’s dad), at least for Bridget.

What a fun book. I laughed out loud in some parts. I found Bridget to be sympathetic and interesting heroine, and it’s not hard to see why so many authors have taken to this genre after the publication of this book in an attempt to duplicate its success. She’s a funny, neurotic mess, but so easy to like. I’m v. glad I read this book before writing my own. I loved the parallel to [amazon_link id=”1612930425″ target=”_blank” ]Pride and Prejudice[/amazon_link], particularly as the [amazon_link id=”B00364K6YW” target=”_blank” ]BBC miniseries[/amazon_link] was also mentioned. I also found it hilarious that both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are name-checked in the book when they play, respectively, Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy in the film. Also fun was the mention of Hugh Grant’s legal trouble with Divine Brown. Wondered if he actually read Bridget Jones’s Diary before agreeing to become Daniel Cleaver, and if so, I have new respect for his ability to laugh at himself.

I loved Bridget, and I loved Bridget Jones’s Diary. Great fun.