Hurrah! Bridget's back and it's v v good

Sara Lawrence | Mail Online - October 10, 2013

© Ifan Bates

Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the last fourteen years you’ll be well aware of the much-loved, ‘everywoman’ Bridget Jones, poster girl character for a generation, either through Fielding’s two previous bestselling books - Bridget Jones’ Diary and the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason - or via the two blockbuster films starring Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

BJ famously invented a whole new vocabulary to describe modern life: singletons, smug marrieds and emotional ****wits spring to mind; not to mention a whole new way of thinking about it: she recorded in her diary her daily struggles with her weight, her alcohol consumption, number of cigarettes smoked and the ups and, let’s face it, mostly downs of her media career.

The main thing about the all-too-human Bridget that appealed - to me, at least - was the uncomfortable way in which she felt out of step with her peer group, most of whom were busy getting married (smug) and thinking about kids (smugger) whilst she was busy being messed around by various commitment-phobic men (emotional ****wits). Her parents and their friends often, at eccentrically middle-class events such as a Boxing Day turkey curry buffet, posed the question most likely to drive a singleton to distraction: ‘how’s your love life?’ The second book chronicled her first real relationship in years, with the scarily clever, serious-but-also-seriously-loving human rights lawyer Mark Darcy.

In this third instalment Bridget is 51, mother to two small children and - shock, horror - a widow. Mark died five years ago (I won’t spoil it for you by revealing how) and thus once again our heroine finds herself out of step with her friends, most of whom are still married and raising their children with the help of their other halves. Everywhere she looks is a sea of couples slipping comfortably into their middle years, safe in the knowledge that dating is but a distant and faintly horrific memory.

Our heroine, however, has to once again throw herself into the bear pit of contemporary London life, deal with the challenges of keeping herself hot to trot and remember, above all, the number one rule of dating - do not text whilst drunk. Of course, despite a plethora of self-help dating guides, she miserably fails at this and many other dating rules to such hilarious effect that you can’t help cringing, if not crying. 

Bridget gets a toy boy, the kids get nits, her mother’s in a home and although the laughs are still there aplenty, there is also a sad, bittersweet edge to the novel that makes it feel just, well, a lot more grown up, like our gal herself. Bridget has dealt (is dealing) with unspeakable horrors and that she generally comes out on top - in spite of her unorthodox methods - makes her more of an idol than ever. 

I laughed, I cried and most of all I loved. Ignore all those sour grapes female columnists who are clearly bitter they didn’t write this tour de force series themselves and get involved immediately, I promise and swear you won’t regret it. Bridget’s back - which is nothing short of ‘totes amazog’ as she herself now likes to say. Hurrah!