Bridget Jones’s Diary
By Helen Fielding
Penguin Putnam, 1999, $12.95
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
By Helen Fielding
Viking, 2000, $24.95

If you’re looking for a good summertime read you might want to try “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and/or its sequel “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.”

We are introduced to Bridget in the first book which purports to be her diary. She is a single young woman living in London trying to find the perfect job, the perfect weight, and, most importantly, the perfect man. Her diary entries concern her ongoing quest of achieving her goals.

Bridget starts out each of her diary entries by listing her weight, caloric intake, and number of cigarettes she’s smoked, in addition to how much alcohol she’s consumed. She often makes little notes next to these explaining the numbers before she even gets to the actual diary entry.

In her diary we watch her as she teeters between wanting to be modern single woman who can do it all and not wanting to be a useless spinster at the ripe old age of 30. She decides to achieve her goals for the New Year by following the advice of self-help books. Unfortunately, she finds they make more sense when she’s drunk.

As the year progresses she finds that not only is she not getting any closer to attaining her goals, but also her personal and family life seems to be spinning out of control as well. Since this is a novel and not real life, everything ends happily. Not necessarily in ways you will expect or even see coming, but quite amusing, nonetheless.

The second novel is also written diary fashion and picks up where the first left off. It doesn’t really matter whether you’ve read the first book or not. The way Fielding reviews what has already occurred is quite humorous. It catches you up on where Bridget is in her life without boring you if you’ve already read the first book.

“Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” begins with Bridget quite happily part of a couple and enjoying her job. Unfortunately, being who she is, she spends more time attempting to analyze her relationship rather than working on it, or even telling her partner what’s going through her mind. She also tends to spend more time daydreaming about the success she’s going to have on her job than doing anything concrete to achieve that success. These tendencies to analyze and daydream produce the exactly opposite results of what she wants, but somehow she still comes out on top.

For example, Bridget decides to become an independent writer and finds someone who gets her an interview with her favorite actor, Colin Firth. Bridget is flown to Italy to meet him. She spends most of the interview asking him about a production of Pride and Prejudice he starred in for the BBC in which he takes off his shirt, quizzing him on how happy he really is with his girlfriend and other inanities.

When she gets back to London she has seven hours to write up her interview which she had taped. Unfortunately, she is unable to complete it in time because she is busy planning all the ways she’ll use the money she’ll make once this launches her career. The editor ends up running a direct transcript of the recording, which does, in the long run, lead to more interviews.

These are not novels that will keep you up at night pondering the questions they ask. Instead they’re light, easy-to-read books that are perfect for long summer days when you want something a little more intellectual than TV, but not by much. Something that will keep you involved and amused by the characters and the situations they get into, but won’t overtax your vacationing brain.

Lisa Dees is a freelance writer living in Aberdeen. She is currently a storyteller for the Moore County Public Libraries.