I’ve been a Bridget Jones’s Diary fan for a number of years
now. It was one of my few airplane
books.
You know, one of those books you buy at the last minute at
the airport because you need something, nay, anything to do on plane? One of those.
I was standing in the airport and I was hating the book I
had. A friend had loaned me Hunter S.
Thompson’s Better Than Sex, and I was quickly and painfully learning that I was
not a Thompson fan.
(I eventually tried Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and also
found it an absolute slog. Sorry folks.)
I’m not sure why I picked up the first Jones book. I do recall I was standing at a kiosk with
extremely limited literature choices, and it’s possible it was the only thing
that looked even remotely interesting. I
flipped it open and started to read, and while the humor was simple (oh look, a
man in a bad sweater!) it looked like it wasn’t going to punish me for reading
it, unlike certain other books I could name.
So I bought it and boarded the plane, and here’s the thing –
I had a good flight. I sat and I read
and while I didn’t feel compelled to keep turning pages (Jones is, for the most
part, a romantic comedy, and they really only end one way) I also never felt
compelled to stop, sigh, and regret my choice.
I even had a nice conversation with the flight attendant, who told me
she thought the book was very funny.
I smiled. I was maybe
halfway through it then, and while I was enjoying myself, I didn’t find it
riotous. I didn’t feel compelled to laugh out loud.
I was almost done with it by the time I got home, and the
next morning I woke up and finished it off.
And while I couldn’t put it amongst the works of great literature, or
even among my favorite books, I kind of loved it.
When people (mostly women, I’ll admit) asked me what I was
reading lately, I more often than not found myself loaning the book to them,
and they had much the reaction I did.
They’d read it in a day or two, and return it with a smile on their face.
Ultimately, it was a perfect little gem that did everything
it was supposed to exactly right.
The problem, of course is that it came to a pretty solid
happy ending. There wasn’t really any
reason to write another.
And yet, as I often say to friends who ask why there are so
many movie sequels, the reason is always simple: Money.
In a kind of a cool twist, a friend I had originally loaned
my copy of the book went to the UK around the time the second book was
published. She brought it home and
loaned it to me, and I was able to read Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
months before it came out in the States.
And… it was really mediocre.
Having already solved most of the complications in the first
novel, this one was forced to create new ones.
And while the first book contained a lot of moments that could easily be
described as, “Well, that’s a little zany, but I could see it happening to
someone I know,” the second book…
Well, frankly, it tried to up the stakes, and it just didn’t
work. The original volume had been a
fun, low stakes book, and this one tried to up everything, and it wasn’t silly
or fun, just kind of annoying and trying-too-hard.
Whereas I had dragged my wife to see the first movie in the
theater, and enjoyed it thoroughly, I caught up with the second movie on video,
when I could get it from the library and not have to pay anything for it.
There were a couple of fun moments, I’ll admit. But whereas the first movie had taken the
best bits of the book and added little ideas that were fun, the second movie
seemed to keep only the stuff that was just flat-out the opposite of good.
I figured it was over then.
Years later I read that Jones had returned, in column format, in some
British newspaper or another. I figured
that eventually that would get turned into a book as well, but it didn’t
happen. I figured this was because the
moment had kinda passed.
And then… and then there was word of a new book.
The thing of it was, I hadn’t care for the second book, and
so the third couldn’t really hurt me, I figured. If it was bad, I’d skip it, or perhaps skim
it and see if any of the old magic was back.
And if it was good?
Well, it would be nice to see Jones redeemed.
Much was made of the fact that Jones’s love interest (and
husband!) died before the events of the third book. The author said the Jones books only work
when she’s single, and maybe that’s the case.
But truthfully, I think a good book could have been crafted out of her
marriage and child-rearing.
(I’ve worked and reworked the below paragraph, and honestly,
it might reveal too much about the book.
Feel free to skip that one, if you want to read the book.)
Instead, Jones became a cougar on the prowl after years of
being a lonely single mother. She spends
the book getting into and out of a relationship with a man several years her
junior, and then the book ramps a periphery character and Jones, because she has
to, heads towards another happily ever after with one of her two choices.
It is, in some ways, the first book all over again, only
with more baggage.
But mostly, it’s less of a fun book. In fact, mostly, it’s a melancholy one.
The fact of the matter is, a dead spouse is a very serious
subject matter, and while the book skirts around the edges of this idea for a
while, it remains the elephant in the room until the book decides to address
it.
The thing of it is, if you liked the character at all, those
passages are genuinely devastating. If
the first book was a light romp, this book can’t, by its very nature ever get
nearly as romp-y.
If the first book was a perfectly crafted thing, this one is
messy, and I don’t know if that was the intention or not. A dead spouse was, ultimately, going to mean
that pathos was baked into the tale, and when I sat around reading reviews,
it’s apparent that people just couldn’t stomach the idea of a tale with happy
in its sad and sad in its happy.
But I was good with it.
A good book is a delicate animal, I think, and the problem
with imperfect ones is that often there’s no real way to fix it. The book spends a lot of time clearing its
throat and trying to get rolling, and I spent maybe 100 pages trying to get
used to reading Bridget’s missives again.
I can imagine an editor, and possibly the author, spent a
long time trying to get the book to launch in just the right way, and
truthfully, I think they blew it.
But as I moved through the book, I found more and more to
like. Bridget spends much of a book
trying to write a screenplay and get it turned into a movie, and since that’s
mostly unrelated to her love life it allows for more laughs.
And while the cougar relationship sometimes trends towards
the awkward, it eventually develops a charm of its own. I suspect that’s because it becomes more
honest as it goes along, starting as a “young man finds a woman 20 years older
than him to be the hottest thing ever” and eventually dives into the real
issues that would present themselves.
And perhaps that’s the issue, really. So much time has passed, so many important
events have occurred, and the book is forced to skip over some and gloss over
others in an effort to get into the story.
But the thing of it is, there was a story there, it probably
just didn’t feel very Bridget Jones-like, what with all the death and the
sadness.
In the end, this is a melancholy book, and much of that
hinges on a dead husband and the prospect of single motherhood. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy knows this
and tries to be honest with it.
And while I don’t think it will eventually be judged a
classic, I suspect that over time this will be the book fans turn to when they
think about sequels to the original. It
will always be found slightly lacking (anything compared to the first book
probably will be) but it has a charm and an honesty all its own.
If the first book is all about happily ever after, this one
is about finding the happiness in the sadness.
