Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason – Helen Fielding
After reading the first one …
It's obviously difficult writing a sequel. On the one hand, you want to capture what made the original book a success (you don't write a sequel if it wasn't); on the other hand, you don't want to write the same book over again. And worse still, if the original was a book that broke new ground, you're worse off, because it's impossible to break the same ground twice.
I remember when I read “Man and Wife”, the follow-up to “Man and Boy”, thinking that it was pretty much the same story again.
So what about this book? There were points when I felt it was falling into the same trap –probably mostly connected to her break-up with Mark Darcy, although I can't actually remember for sure when I was thinking that, and her mum's relationship with Wellington. And there was a point in the book where I felt Bridget had finally crossed that infinitesimal line between endearingly bonkers and Too-Stupid-To-Live – most notably, when she fails to catch the plane to Rome to interview Colin Firth. And for large chunks of her break-up with Mark Darcy you just want to tell her to blinking well talk to the guy. I really don't like stupid misunderstanding as a plot device, even when as here it's the result of her funny and very silly confused dependency on self-help books.
But there were loads of things I did like. The character of Rebecca (who comes out quite differently from the film – shame I saw it the wrong way around as otherwise that would have been an even better twist); the self-referencing – her interviewing Colin Firth, who played Darcy in the film (don't remember that from the film but it would have been very funny, like Julia Roberts' failed impression of herself in Ocean's Twelve); the way Bridget comes into her own when thrown in jail in Thailand (great in the film too, but differently so); and the way she actually manages to hold down a job. It had a bit of a nice happy ending (all comedies end with a wedding … all very soppy). I liked the bit character of Wellington too (“In the darkness the stone becomes the buffalo. In sunlight all is as it is”). But of course the best thing about the book is Bridget and her friends.
This book couldn't do what the original did – introduce the world to Bridget and her type. But it didn't need to. In the end I didn't feel it was a retread of the original; just that it was a good laugh, and that however stupid Bridget might be, she comes good in the end.
It's obviously difficult writing a sequel. On the one hand, you want to capture what made the original book a success (you don't write a sequel if it wasn't); on the other hand, you don't want to write the same book over again. And worse still, if the original was a book that broke new ground, you're worse off, because it's impossible to break the same ground twice.
I remember when I read “Man and Wife”, the follow-up to “Man and Boy”, thinking that it was pretty much the same story again.
So what about this book? There were points when I felt it was falling into the same trap –probably mostly connected to her break-up with Mark Darcy, although I can't actually remember for sure when I was thinking that, and her mum's relationship with Wellington. And there was a point in the book where I felt Bridget had finally crossed that infinitesimal line between endearingly bonkers and Too-Stupid-To-Live – most notably, when she fails to catch the plane to Rome to interview Colin Firth. And for large chunks of her break-up with Mark Darcy you just want to tell her to blinking well talk to the guy. I really don't like stupid misunderstanding as a plot device, even when as here it's the result of her funny and very silly confused dependency on self-help books.
But there were loads of things I did like. The character of Rebecca (who comes out quite differently from the film – shame I saw it the wrong way around as otherwise that would have been an even better twist); the self-referencing – her interviewing Colin Firth, who played Darcy in the film (don't remember that from the film but it would have been very funny, like Julia Roberts' failed impression of herself in Ocean's Twelve); the way Bridget comes into her own when thrown in jail in Thailand (great in the film too, but differently so); and the way she actually manages to hold down a job. It had a bit of a nice happy ending (all comedies end with a wedding … all very soppy). I liked the bit character of Wellington too (“In the darkness the stone becomes the buffalo. In sunlight all is as it is”). But of course the best thing about the book is Bridget and her friends.
This book couldn't do what the original did – introduce the world to Bridget and her type. But it didn't need to. In the end I didn't feel it was a retread of the original; just that it was a good laugh, and that however stupid Bridget might be, she comes good in the end.
Labels: Reading
posted by tomdg at 12:58 PM
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