Bridget's Third

You know I've read and love Bridget Jones's Diary, because I wrote about it before. You probably also know that a third novel came out quite some time ago, and that it was completely burned down by reviewers. I found this quite disappointing, as I had been looking forward to the new book ever since it was announced a long while ago. But I decided not to read it, to keep the idea of Bridget and Mark living happily ever after in my mind.
Then I read an interview with Helen Fielding, who was not at all concerned about all the bad reviews, saying that it's the readers who decide, in the end. And the book has been selling really well, which must partly be long-time readers wanting to know what happened next, and partly word-of-mouth advertising. But she did persuade me a bit, and also, she made me curious. What would Bridget be like at 50? And also: could it really be as bad as the reviewers made it out to be?
So last Saturday, I was standing in a bookshop with a friend, when she casually asked me whether I had already read it. When I said no but I did want to, she pushed it into my hands, and I bought it.

Now this is one of those books you can't have laying around for ages, moving it around to get to another book and thinking 'ow, yeah, I should read that one day' (as with Crime & Punishment, or Oliver Twist, to name a few examples). This is one of those books you dive into immediately. Which means that after 3 days, I'm about half-way through now.
I won't be giving too many spoilers, apart from what you've probably already read online, but if you really really don't want to know anything about this book, stop reading here.

At first, it was great. More Bridget! More craziness! More counting of alcohol units and weird self-help books. The writing style and wittiness were all there, just as if there hadn't been a 15 year gap.
After the first few elating paragraphs, I started to see what the reviewers meant. It wasn't the same Bridget. She had gotten older, and sadder, and at the same time stayed the same. This doesn't really work. Bridget was always kind of goofy, but you could see that she was quite smart and had Common Knowledge. Somehow, this has disappeared. No more literary remarks between the lines, no more small comments on events taking place 'in the outside world'. Also, she has managed to raise two kids to school-going age, but can't figure out how Twitter works? She can dress them, feed them, get them to school, get them back home, feed them again, bathe them, put them to bed, and not clear up the kitchen? Not very realistic.
And then there's the 'no Mark' thing. I can see how Helen Fielding wanted to get Mark out of the way so Bridget can have another love interest, but then really put him out of the way. Not have him lingering about with Bridget crying over him all the time, and the kids asking about him all the time (seriously, the younger was 4 months old when he died, how much will she be asking after daddy?). Also, it's been what, 5 years? It's like Helen Fielding couldn't really forgive herself for killing off Mark (a lot of fans would agree with her there) and therefore kept him in a bit.
And then there's the whining. It's all so horrible, being over fifty, being fat, having kids, having to do a job, being on Twitter, having a guy not call you back, on and on and on... In the earlier books, Bridget would be slightly unorganised and sometimes sad, but she wouldn't really whine about it. She would keep a bright face and move on, or try to move on, and if there was any obsessing over men, it was positive.
Finally, the whole structure of the book. It isn't called Bridget Jones's Diary anymore, for a good reason, because it isn't really a diary. It starts in the 'now', and then goes back through Bridget's older diary from the year before, with her adding fore-shadowing or 'back-shadowing' comments in between. This is Bridget Jones commenting on Bridget Jones. And it doesn't work, it takes away from the self-absorbed Bridget and turns her into a very self-conscious Bridget, trying to censor her past self.

That doesn't sound too good, does it?

But then I got thinking: the earlier 2 Bridget novels were written in the 90s, a time of optimism, of forward-going, of new-found freedoms. This novel is very much a post-financial crisis novel: everything is darker, people whine more, people are more self-absorbed and less focused on the world around them. Also, less interest in culture and literature, as expressed through Bridget's inability to write the screenplay for her Hedda Gabler adaptation (the only truly feminist/literary bit in the whole novel so far). Somehow, positive, bubbly, outgoing Bridget finds herself in darker times. And she has had to adapt, big time.
Which made me see the novel in another light, and as I came to this insight already half-way through the novel, I may have to read it again pretty quickly to see if my theory holds any ground.
But for now, I will have to get through it first. And even with the above stuck firmly in the back of my mind, the whining is still pretty tough to get through. I hope she falls in love again pretty soon...