Bridget Jones is coming back. After 15 years reveling in the glory that comes with selling approximately 15 million copies of her first book, Helen Fielding claims to have found her “Bridget” voice again.
Whatever you make of that alarmingly quick passage of time, this announcement comes as quite a surprise. Bridget Jones was one character we were pretty sure we’d seen the back of.
And to be frank, I’d much prefer it that way.
The best thing about Bridget Jones was her journey through “singledom”. She was the voice of a generation of women and quite possibly men too, who felt they weren’t good enough for love. And it was a brave, brash, and hilarious insight into the single life.
But Bridget Jones has had her time to shine. From the moment she ran to meet Darcy in that rainy London street, dressed only in her coat and running shoes, she became a character best left to the memory bank; a reluctant and pretty unlikely heroine of her very own, very specific and entirely hilarious take on the single life. What else could we possibly want to know?
According to the publishers, Jones will re-appear in a “new phase of life”. A sentence that filled me with horror - surely not Bridget Jones the mummy blogger? Not that I have anything against mummy bloggers, I hasten to add. It’s just hard to believe that the fretting disorganised, self-destructive mess that was Bridget Jones’s the single woman, could be anywhere as amusing in the grown-up version.
Or could it?
Hours of sleep: 4. Number of coffees drunk: 7. Minutes to oneself: 0
Fielding is not giving much away. In a recent interview on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, she said writing the new chapters had “made her laugh”. And that while most of the main characters will re-appear, some friends will come and go – “just like in real life”.
Apparently Jones will also encounter several challenges of the modern age, like fossicking for Twitter followers and possibly writing a blog (Ah! See above). That said, she’ll also still be fighting the same old, drinking and smoking too much, not exercising enough demons that made her so loveable in the first place.
As Fielding herself puts it: “She’s a bit more successful, but she’s never really going to change.”
So let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
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