Word: bridget
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...Fielding knows when she's on to a good thing: this sequel avoids making Bridget relationship-bound, and duplicates many of the elements of the initial diary, incomplete sentences and all. The diet books of the first diary may have been replaced by self-help ones, but Bridget's pick-and-mix approach, choosing only the advice she enjoys, remains, as do the dynamics of her tripartite friendship with Jude and Shazzer. As they work their way through their various relationships, that friendship is both funny and genuinely warm. The casual acceptance of smoking, alcohol use and sex (aside: could...
...some ways, Bridget resembles a latter-day version of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, caught as she is a picaresque series of adventures and winning goodwill from both other characters and readers by dint of sheer charisma (and some aid from Mark Darcy). Admittedly, those adventures include perhaps the weak point of the novel, when Bridget is framed for smuggling drugs in Thailand, which seems to be the excitement-and-terror locale du jour (see Brokedown Palace or The Beach). Out of urban London, Bridget's neuroticism seems hopelessly out of context: for all her moaning in her diary...
...Still, Fielding undercuts criticism by employing a bit of self-parody. Recognizing the potential silliness of Bridget's obsession with Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy on TV's "Pride and Prejudice"), the author exaggerates it by giving Bridget an over-the-top interview opportunity with the man himself (part of the in-joke is that Bridget is writing for the Independent, the same newspaper where Bridget herself was created in a spoof column by Fielding). Bridget falling over herself to ask Firth about the diving scene in Pride and Prejudice ("what I mean is did you ever have to take...
...true that The Edge of Reason is not going to convert any non-Bridget fans with its self-indulgent length (352 pages? How does a busy woman like Bridget find time to write almost a page a day?). And even fans will notice that the plots of the novel don't tie together as neatly as its predecessor. Whereas the relationship between Bridget's mother and her unctuous Portuguese suitor Julio was the plot lynchpin of the first novel, this time around the mother's adoption of Wellington, a Kikuyu who is much wiser than the muddle-headed, annoying mother...
...Still, that the book revolves around 1997 reminds us how long the wait for this sequel has been, and how much Bridget's unique tone was missed. (Bridget Jones, you've been gone too long.) The Edge of Reason will probably not engender any new angst-ridden debates about the state of the modern career women, but it does continue Fielding's fine form. In the tradition of comic novels, there's even a marriage at the end, although this reviewer is not about to say whose. Grab a Chardonnay; it's time to keep up with this Jones...