RRP: $36.99
What do you do when a girlfriend’s 60th birthday party is the same day as your boyfriend’s 30th? Is it wrong to lie about your age when online dating? Is it morally wrong to have a blow-dry when one of your children has head lice? Does the Dalai Lama actually tweet or is it his assistant? Is technology now the fifth element? Or is that wood? Is sleeping with someone after 2 dates and 6 weeks of texting the same as getting married after 2 meetings and 6 months of letter writing in Jane Austen’s day?
Pondering these, and other modern dilemmas, Bridget Jones stumbles through the challenges of single-motherhood, tweeting, texting and redisovering her sexuality in what SOME people rudely and outdatedly call ‘middle age’. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is the long-awaited return of the much-loved character from Helen Fielding.
What’s inside it?
When we first met Bridget Jones, she was an anti-heroine; the slightly overweight calorie counter who was searching for Mr. Right amidst chain smoking, getting sloshed and ‘fannying about with press releases’, alongside plenty of embarassing and askward social moments. She was endearing because she was an imperfect lead character we could all relate to her in some way. When she bagged her man, women across the world reading the book and watching the film rejoiced as Bridget represented the fact that despite all her inadequacies, it was still possible to find a man who loved her, ‘just as she is’.
Unfortunately that fairytale ending has gone down in flames in this book which is a little too much like the real world for my liking. Without spoiling the details completely, Mr Darcy is no longer on the scene and Bridget is a struggling single mum of two young children. Now 51 years old, Bridget has to pick up the pieces and re-insert herself back into the world of dating while holding it together for the kids. She’s the same insecure, lovable, imperfect character, but we saw her go through so much drama and strife in the last two books, it all seems a bit too cruel that Mad About the Boy puts her through the worst time of all of them.
Read it if…
You’re a Bridget Jones fan and you think you can stomach a Bridget future without Mr Darcy.
Image / Supplied