Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy by Helen Fielding

I was on my OE in London when I first really heard about Bridget Jones's Diary... probably because the film was coming out that starred Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones, Colin Firth as Mark Darcy and Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver.  Also the flat I was dossing in just happened to have a copy of Bridget Jones's Diary conveniently on the shelf in the lounge room.  It was a cringe fest and too funny not to laugh out loud.

I enjoyed that book so much I bought the second book Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and laughed and cringed my way through that book too.

So I was quite excited to find that Helen Fielding had written a third book... then devastated to find through the publicity machine that she'd killed Mark Darcy off!!!  I couldn't possibly think of how that could have occurred.  Luckily this third book does eventually explain it.

Anyhow, here is the front cover and blurb for Bridget Jones - Mad About the Boy:

 

So Bridget is now a mother... and if you remember how chaotic she was as a Singleton (remember the blue leek soup?), well she isn't much better as a mother.  She is desolate still at the loss of Mark, despite it being five or so years down the track since he died.  She is trying to get a career again, get back in the dating game, come to grips with technology like Twitter and texting, and of course there is that perpetual old chestnut, her weight issues. 

Just to add some more colour to the story are the men she dates, her crazy friends with their own dating/love life issues, a mother who is still on a completely different planet, and a barely holding it together Daniel Cleaver. 

And then there are her two kids, Billy and Mabel, also still coming to terms with the death of their father, coping with their mother's grief and just being your typical kids.

The text swings between your traditional diary entries, lists, graphs, tweets on Twitter, emails and texts.  Chapters are generally short.  There are still the laugh out loud moments and the pure cringe that only a character like Bridget can bring.  There are situations in the book that are so obvious the worst will happen that as you read it is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.

At 386 pages long it is a solid read.  I kept it by the bed and read it bit by bit during the term... but I did go some long periods between reads so had to re-read some parts to get the gist again.  There were other days that I feasted on the book.

If you loved how riridiculously funny first two books, you won't be disappointed by this book (apart from sharing Bridget's sorrow at the loss of Mark Darcy).  It is a good solid completion of Bridget's story.  I'd be hard pressed to see how Helen Fielding could write another book about Bridget before she hits the retirement village now!!