Bridget Jones’s Diary is one of the more widely recognized titles in the romantic-comedy genre. A modern re-imagining of Pride and Prejudice, we follow a year of Bridget’s life as a woman in her mid-thirties looking for love and a fulfilling career in London in the early 2000s.
I first saw the movie last year and thought that, while not my favorite rom-com, it certainly lived up to its reputation of being a cute and lighthearted film. After watching I was eager to read the book and get a better feel for Bridget’s character and her adventures as an adult during a time period when I was still a child. Unfortunately, I was a little let down.
Much like Legally Blonde, all the charm of the story came from the performance of the actress who portrayed the main character. Renee Zellwegger gave Bridget so much more personality than Helen Felding did. As is the case with most novels told in a diary format, we are only able to learn about the things that are happening through the limited viewpoint of the main character. That’s not always a bad thing. Obviously you are going to see things as the character sees it. However, most authors take this to mean they can make their main characters moan like children. Bridget sometimes felt like a teenager and not an independent woman in her mid-thirties. She was constantly complaining about minute details about her relationship with every person she interacted with and obsessively calculating how much she weighed.
If I had not seen the movie beforehand I would not have been able to tell this was a Pride and Prejudice retelling. The only true indication that this story is a retelling of the classic is there being a character named Mr. Darcy, who is basically non-existent during this book. He appears at the very beginning when Bridget is home for Christmas and disappears for roughly 120 pages, only to appear briefly at an event her work is hosting and resurface close to the end of the book. The fact that he likes Bridget is obvious, but she does not seem to even pay him any attention until she suddenly falls in love in the final third of the book. I really feel like the book did not have enough build-up for Mark Darcy and Bridget’s romance to have a believable payoff.
Overall, I didn’t hate this book and I can sort of appreciate what Helen Felding was trying to do, but I was expecting more. I have seen and enjoyed the other movies in this series, but as to the question on if I will continue reading the other books, I would have to say I’ll be giving them a pass for now.
Rating: 2.75 out 5 Stars.
If you have read this book or seen the movies, please share your thoughts below!
Thanks for reading!
