Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding
I've actually lost my mind - am I really curious enough to read the rest of these books? I was mostly intrigued by how well I rated the first one- the combination of a surprisingly flawed, troubled and massively 90s heroine in a pretty grounded storyline was a weirdly refreshing break from all my usual blood baths especially in my bid to be a more rounded and varied reader. Hurray for trying new things!
...So uh, wtf happened to all that in this one? Bridget herself has had a minor flandarization making her much, much less likeable. Actually the whole cast outside of Mark and Bridget's Dad is borderline insufferable??? Her mother is strangely racist in this one??? What??? What is happening???
Also so much of the more grounded material is passed over in lieu of Bridget - ||having an incredibly unrealistic interview with Colin Firth (that makes me cringe thinking about it), getting sent to a Thai prison for drug trafficking and being put under police protection because someone threatens her with a mob-style bullet in a box?|| Let's not even get into the crux of the problem in the whole novel being that ||Bridget feels insecure about her relationship because her shitty friends make her feel insecure so she spends the whole novel doing 'miscommunication' hijinks. God I hate that trope, especially considering that Mark is genuinely an intelligent character and has to put up with Bridget suddenly being far stupider and naïve than she ever was in the first book? I was mostly pissed off that all of this nonsense could have been solved with a phonecall along the lines of "are you interested in still being in a relationship with me?"|| I'm not having any of that BuT ThEn ThErE WoUlD bE nO sToRy bollocks either, there's conflict necessary for plot and then there's conflict that would literally just never happen if people acted like people.
The general divide between 'singletons' and 'smug married's' is kinda... cringe also? I get the feeling that Bridget Jones would have combusted if she had to ever deal with 21st century dating. Mostly it was an excuse for her shitty friends to be worse to her slightly less shitty friend who happened to be married? I genuinely can't tell if it's meant to be a tongue-in-cheek riff on 90s feminism and girl power or if it's dead serious in trying to show an interpretation of a 90s feminst? The mind boggles.
I suppose from the 90s kitsch angle it has that going for it? It's quite fun to settle back into all the 90s Britainisms and there's even coverage of a pivotal 90s event in the book which gave it a little bit of charm. But just generally it's a poor show from everyone and everything, I finished this out of some mix of traincrash morbidity and eyebrow quirked incredulity.
