Book Review: Bridget Jones's Diary

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Bridget Jones may not be the ideal feminist, but her self-loathing strikes chords with any woman who has ever beat herself up over a chocolate binge or a not-so-virtuous night of booze and butts. Bridget, England's literary answer to Ally McBeal, laments her status as a “singleton,” though being a “married smug” is not the most desirable alternative either. Like our beloved Ally, Bridget wears microminis, which her boss, with whom she has an affair, calls nonexistent. In the course of a year, Bridget reveals her many obsessions and insecurities in light prose that satirizes the self-help craze, heroin chic and e-mail, the very things we're loathe to admit buying into. Fielding's laugh-out-loud hilarious novel perfectly captures the irony of a woman trying to be an independent thinker and one just searching for the perfect man.