Bridget, Bridget, Bridget Jones, our everywoman of the last few years who made it okay to be less than perfect, has arrived in e-book format along with a sequel, The Edge of Reason, both by Helen Fielding.
We are pleased and blessed to have a portable Bridget Jones’s Diary to take with us as we travel. Bridget, aka Bridge, serves as a handy guide to life, though hopefully we’ll travel through it with better luck than Bridget, whose own trip encompasses subsequent jail-time in The Edge of Reason. We can now carry our portable Bridget Jones and many similar books on a PDA stashed away in a small purse or read her on our desktop computer, depending on how we want her and where we are. We can travel with Bridget in our back-pocket, as it were.
And why shouldn’t Bridget be a hit with us women? She’s flawed, likeable and believable. Female authors have accounted for their share of top New York Times bestsellers, with a record 67-percent share in 1999, and gems like Bridget Jones’s Diary are part of the reason.
So why the fuss over Bridget the character? Because she is quirky, smart, accomplished in her own way. To her boss at “Sit Up Britain,” the television program for which she works, she is already a legend–having landed an interview with the hunted and haunted Kafir Aghani-Hini. It would never have happen without the kind-hearted and emotionally smitten Mark Darcy saving Bridget at the last minute. Bridget partially desires Mark Darcy and partially not, for she is still emotionally or, rather, physically drawn to office scoundrel and all-around wanker, the floppy-haired Daniel Cleaver. In the film adaptation that’s Hugh Grant, and he is perfect, as if born to it, quelle surprise.
Here-and-now Austen
The Bridget Jones series is really a clever and contemporary replay of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice retold and adapted; set in the here and the now, including a Mr. Darcy character played by the same actor in both film versions (Colin Firth). Bridget has her share of screw-ups, is far less than perfect, is just five or so pounds overweight, her blonde highlights grown out a bit too much, and busy trying to make a living and keep up with the bills. You can see why so many women would find ways to read this book either in traditional print form or e-book form. It really is the story of their lives in so many ways. How fitting that technology let it be highly transportable, perhaps along with many other books of the same character–though none have quite the same character as Bridget Jones.
There is a bit of Bridget in all of us. A bit of the screw-up, the Calamity Jane as my grandfather used to call me, she comes with the five pounds, the aforementioned highlights, the good guy she knows she should be with, and the bad boy she thinks she wants to be with and who is out to convince her of that. What woman has not lived through this scenario, and if you haven’t, how can you say you have yet lived? Alas, it is almost a rite of passage, though I envy you if you have not. And that’s the thing about Bridget, whether you have been there or not, and while most us have, she is likable and someone you wouldn’t mind knowing or even being. She is cool in a screwy way and that makes her ten times cooler.
Proudly zaftig
What I love about Bridge Jones is that she’s honest about her life and her pain; that she’s not a perfect size four, and that she’s all T and A and not afraid to show it. The aloof and cool size-four girls of control would never dream of wearing the sexy little numbers that Bridget does; they gain a pound and they’re on Atkins or South Beach.
We get to see Bridget painfully waxing her own bikini line and wearing “scary stomach holding-in panties” to help chances of “reaching crucial moment,” which we all know is a thin euphemism for sex. She’s not what society tells her she “should” be, in any way; she’s “overweight” by some absurd Hollywood standard that dictates that a size 8 and 135 pounds, which is normal for a woman of her height, “is too much.” When did we become sold on this idea that we needed to be mere wisps of things lying on our fainting couch and dying of consumption all pale and wan?
Frankly, I think Bridget looks great. Yes, she’s emotionally all over the map and messy, she’s unmarried, and though these things concern her, they are the very things that make her great.
Honest “wantom sex goddess”
Bridget gets hurt and gets screwed, literally and metaphorically. A sweet and not-so-sweet girl, she is an honest “wanton sex goddess,” with messy emotions that she doesn’t try to hide.
Consider when she gets dumped for “an American stick insect”–the kind of cool and aloof girl with the makeup and a Hermes scarf around her neck who works, vaguely, in some vague creative and corporate position; the type in Britain we call a Sloane Ranger.
Bridget allows herself a day or two of copious self pity, involving equally generous amounts of vodka, and a ceremonial dumping of self-help books all targeted about how to catch a man. Then she is off to sit, sobbing in the bath, her stockings hanging over the rail (another truly believable detail) until she snaps out of it and decides she “will not be beaten by a bad man and an American stick insect.”
It makes me want to cheer, even if it is Hollywood manipulative. Before you know it, Bridget is on television sliding down a fireman’s pole in a mini skirt with her less-than-perfect but beautiful zaftig ass; she is akin to the Carole King of our times because she gets herself back up and tries again. Bridget has found some balance and she lives her life and knows that because she sleeps with a guy, doesn’t mean she’s committed to anything–which, by the way, is a very guy attitude.
There are so many lessons to be learned here, some obvious. Don’t be size two, it’s not healthy, don’t wax your bikini line into pleasing topiaries because it hurts and you wouldn’t do it were it not for some guy, and so on. In short, if you wouldn’t do it for yourself, don’t do it at all.
Leaky boat, choppy channel, but what a voyage!
What more can I say without giving away the entire book? That I won’t do, but I don’t mind telling you who Bridget is. That much is important because she is relatable, by turns sweet and sour, mostly sweet and always ready for where life takes her, even if her little boat does have a few small holes.
We know Bridget will find a way through her choppy channel. That she will prevail. Just as we know we will, too. She is a true idol of our times.
For Bridgets on the go
For the everywoman who is Bridget on the go, you’ll be pleased to know that portable Bridget is available from Amazon, (not the Diary but the Edge of Reason), eBookMall.com, eBooks.com, Fictionwise.com, Penguin, Putnam, and most of the other usual venues. It is available as a downloadable PDF Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, and Palm Reader, among other e-book formats (see below). Prices range from $12 (Fictionwise) to $12.95 (Penguin Putnam). I found the best prices on Fictionwise and Amazon. Meanwhile you can check out a sample excerpt.
So take Bridget with you while you are on the go, and remember the famous line, “I’ll do it!” With your PDA and Bridget in your pocket, you can do anything.
Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a former publicity director and editor for David R. Godine, Publisher and has worked at Conde Nast Publications, The Atlantic Monthly and others. She has been widely published and now writes regularly for several publications including the famous Cleveland Blogcritics, Geek2Geek, Boston Globe Arts Section, and she has also written for Publisher’s Weekly, Independent Publisher and others. Visit her Web site.
