Jessica's Reviews > Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

I'm going to give this five stars, though I didn't think I would until about halfway through.

I was upset by the premise of this (if you don't know, it's not a spoiler, it's right there on the cover, but Bridget is now a single mom). After it taking her two books to really get together with Mark Darcy, Mark is gone and Bridget is trying to hold it all together at 51, with two young children, trying to get back into dating and start a career as a screenwriter, which made me feel like she (and I) had been robbed of her happily ever after. Some of the parts about dating websites, and most of her friends still being single and drunk every night, I was like, REALLY!? REALLY!? At your/their age/s?

But then I started to see through that. Of course Bridget isn't living like a J. Crew catalogue model in a gracious home with Mark and two perfectly behaved children! Bridget is a real person, and this is a real life she's having. (Okay, she's fictional, this is fiction, but you know what I mean.)

In BRIDGET JONES DIARY, I had nothing in common with Bridget. When I first read that book, I was younger than her, married, and I've still never had a drink or a cigarette in my life. But what hooked me was two things: that it was an update (hilariously, wonderfully) of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and that underneath it all, Bridget felt just as nutty and insecure as I felt. And that's what drew me in here. Now, as a mother, Bridget is more like me than she ever was before. No, I'm not dating a man young enough to be my son. No, I don't have to keep track of how much nicotine gum I chew every day. But I know what it's like to run in, late and sweaty, for school concerts, and discover that your shirt is rucked up and or your underwear is showing. I have been late every day for picking up my preschooler, and then had the teacher send out a general email saying "some mothers must be confused about pick up time." I've had sick kids and still gone out to the movies or gotten a massage and then felt guilty all day the next day. I've sent the kids out with a babysitter so that I could work on a book, and then spent the entire day shopping online for clothes that I don't end up purchasing because the models make me feel fat, and then "gotten revenge" on J. Crew by binge eating. Right now, I'm having to learn to say No to a lot of things, and take a break, because I can't hold it all together, and be a mother, and look perfect, and write wonderful books, and when Bridget goes through that, I found myself laugh-crying (at the gym, on a recumbent bike). This is the perfect finish to Bridget's story, frankly. I kind of hope she doesn't do any more. If you haven't read BRIDGET JONES' DIARY, please do yourself a favor and read it! Then skip the second one, which was just all right, and go straight here, to see where our Bridget ends up.