Product Description

Bridget Jones wants to have it all - and once she's given up smoking and got down to 8st 7 she will. Based on Helen Fielding's diary in the Independent newspaper, this is a novel about a year in the life of a single girl on an optimistic but doomed quest for self-improvement and Inner Poise. First published in 1996.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9023 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74 pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be nonexistent.

At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel, the thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance, "get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full of "Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow "Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned, "We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going? Still having sex?'"

This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year of performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine. On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried

Amazon.co.uk Review
In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74 pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be nonexistent.

At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel, the thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance, "get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full of "Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow "Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned, "We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going? Still having sex?'"

This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year of performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine. On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried

Review
The 'Bridget Jones's Diary', which has become such an acclaimed feature in the Independent, is here presented as a novel covering a full year. All the self-mocking irony, the floundering attempts at reconciling her craving for food, alcohol, tobacco and the office Lothario, with her need to be seen as a cool feminist professional, are hilariously recounted. Fielding succinctly captures all the angst and envy of late 20th-century life. (Kirkus UK)

Newspaper columnist Fielding's first effort, a bestseller in Britain, lives up to the hype: This year in the life of a single woman is closely observed and laugh-out-loud funny. Bridget, a thirtysomething with a midlevel publishing job, tempers her self-loathing with a giddy (if sporadic) urge toward self-improvement: Every day she tallies cigarettes smoked, alcohol "units" consumed, and pounds gained or lost. At Una Alconbury's New Year's Day Curry Buffet, her parents and their friends hover as she's introduced to an eligible man, Mark Darcy. Mark is wearing a diamond-patterned sweater that rules him out as a potential lust object, but Bridget's reflexive rudeness causes her to ruminate on her own undesirability and thus to binge on chocolate Christmas-tree decorations. But in the subsequent days, she cheers herself up with fantasies of Daniel, her boss's boss, a handsome rogue with an enticingly dissolute air. After a breathless exchange of e-mail messages about the length of her skirt, Daniel asks for her phone number, causing Bridget to crown herself sex goddess. . . until she spends a miserable weekend staring at her silent phone. By chanting "aloof, unavailable ice-queen" to herself, she manages to play it cool long enough to engage Daniel's interest, but once he's her boyfriend, he spends Sundays with the shades pulled watching TV - and is quickly unfaithful. Meanwhile, after decades of marriage, her mother acquires a bright orange suntan, moves out of the house, and takes up with a purse-carrying smoothie named Julio. And so on. Bridget navigates culinary disasters, mood swings, and scary publishing parties; she cares for her parents, talks endlessly with her cronies, and maybe, just maybe, hooks up with a nice boyfriend. Fielding's diarist raises prickly insecurities to an art form, turns bad men into good anecdotes, and shows that it is possible to have both a keen eye for irony and a generous heart. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Absolute masterpiece
I am on my fourth read of Bridget Jones's Diary and I have watched the film at least fifty times. I'm addicted. The book is fantastic, I can guarantee you will not be able to put it down and will read it probably within less than a week.

*brilliant* ;)
Actually I don't like diary novels, I thought, when I considered reading this book. Now I'm glad that I did read it anyway, because now I know that I love at least one diary-book, in fact Bridget Jones's Diary!

This funny and lovely Book was written by Helen Fielding who was born in Yorkshire. Today she lives in London, where the story of Bridget Jones, the main character, takes place as well. Published in 1997, the book was very successful in England. Later it became a global best-seller.

With her first diary-entry, Bridget characterizes in a few sentences the whole generation of women which she belongs to: She's not only too thick, moreover she tries to stop smoking desperately. In addition, pursed by bad conscience, she counts how much alcohol she drinks each day. As if she, as a single woman in London at the age of 30, didn't have enough other problems, she makes the New Year's resolution to find a boyfriend within the next year. A nice one, to spend her life with. For example her boss Daniel Cleaver who is very attractive. He seems to be open for a relationship but only as long as it is uncomplicated and non-binding. This causes many problems.
Till next New Year's Eve it's not only her weight that goes up and down. It's the same with many other chapters in her life because she is very talented in walking into traps, what is always very funny and entertaining.

Well, all things considered the book tells a story about a chaotic, lovely and not-married woman who tries to change her life.
It is very entertaining with typical Brtitish-humour and much irony. I often had to laugh out loud when I was reading it and that is the reason why I'm giving this book five stars. Above all the characterization is brilliant and the writing excellent. The plot isn't really profund but nevertheless it's fascinating and
never boring. I think many women in the whole world can identify themselves with Bridget, so I think that the moral message of the book is the following: You're not alone with your problems. There are other people who share them with you. Just take it easy! ;)

I really enjoyed reading it and if you're looking for a funny book to get you in a good mood, you wouldn't find a better one, I think.

In Bridget's crazy live she nearly misses to find the right man but don't you miss to read more about it yourself. ;)

Totally hilarious.
Now this book is absolutely hilarious, easy to read and easy to understand. I could read this book repeatedly but I would reccommend this for the ages of 19 to infinity and beyond. While reading this book I was doubled up laughing and if i wasn't doubled up I was choking with laughter. Thank you and I hope this helps. Enjoy the book.