Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries by Helen Fielding.
Title: Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries.
Author: Helen Fielding.
Genre: Fiction, chick-lit, romance, epistolary novel, humour.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2016.
Summary: Single and forty-something, Bridget, with biological clock ticking very, very loudly, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at the eleventh hour. A joyful pregnancy which is dominated, however, by a crucial but terribly awkward question - who is the father? Mark Darcy: honourable, decent, notable human rights lawyer? Or Daniel Cleaver: charming, witty, notable fuckwit? Notably, both are her exes. A story of baby-deadline panic, maternal bliss, and social, professional, technological, culinary and childbirth chaos from the world’s favorite Singleton.
My rating: 6/10.
My review: I have always had a love/hate relationship with Bridget. EWhat I've always enjoyed about Bridget is her wit and this almost poignant relatability in all of her lowest moments - spending time with her makes one feel better because she is all of us at our most hysterical, most paranoid, and most self-deprecating. On the other hand, however, Bridget seems to be in this state almost all the time in this novel, which at times gets annoying and frustrating.
♥ As Mark looked at me with those deep, brown soulful eyes, I asked myself, "What would the Dalai Lama do in this situation?"
We sprang together like unleashed beasts, and continued in that manner in my hotel room, for the rest of the night.
♥ "I've made a mistake," he said.
Mind starting spiralling: horror, doom, pain, vulnerable in nighty and him in his suit. Not this? Not such passion and intimacy, instantly replaced by pain and rejection. Not in my nighty.
♥ Babies: yuk. I am a top professional woman. Every woman has her needs, which I simply fulfil with adult liaisons, almost French in their elegance.
♥ "BONG," went the headline theme, urgent scuttling news music in the background, implying that Sit Up Britain minions were scouring for news, antlike, all over the hot spots of the world, when in fact everyone was just arseing around talking about sex in the office.
♥ "Yes, yes, we must. You know the one thing people most regret when they're about to die? Not that they didn't save the world, or rise to the pinnacle of their career, but that they didn't have more sex."
♥ I couldn't believe it.
In the background I could hear the friends continuing.
"But she's been drinking and smoking."
"Oh my God, you're right-she's killed the baby."
"The baby's dead."
"And she doesn't know who the father is."
♥ Blimey. Is it that easy? Have I been sitting here being so obsessed with making sure people think I don't fancy them, in case they think I'm needy, that they actually think I don't fancy them?
♥ Daniel seemed to have developed some sort of urge to be taken seriously. Maybe it was to do with the advancing years. The car too! I was having a baby and Daniel was having a cliché.
♥ "We're all just an impulse away from The Jerry Springer Show, love," said Dad, patting his embryonic grand-daughter affectionately.
♥ But Daniel is so funny and charming. It's like they're two halves of the perfect man, who'll spend the rest of their lives each wanting to outdo the other one. And now it's all enacting itself in my stomach.
♥ Toilet really is wonderful invention. Is just amazing to have such an item in one's home, which can so calmly, cleanly and efficiently take all the sick away. Love the lovely toilet. Is cool and solid, calm and dependable. Is fine just to lie here and keep it handy. Maybe it is not Mark I really love but the toilet.
♥ There you go, little sweetheart: cheesy potato.
We have to tell the truth, don't we? That's one of the things we're always going to do. Even if it means being very, very brave. Even if we really don't want to.
♥ I closed my eyes. Why couldn't I learn not to be so insecure, not to flee at the first hint of rejection? To understand that there might be more to it than me being too old or too fat or silly?
♥ Everyone jumped in startlement and peered at the phone as if it contained a message from an Egyptian god released by the morning sun shining through a tiny hole in a pyramid onto an amulet.
♥ "Don't fight. I already have one child inside me."
"You're right," said Mark. "We need to discuss this calmly, as adults. Can we come inside?"
"If only," said Daniel, "we'd thought of asking that before."
♥ "It's the expectation which undoes everyone. Every time. It should be like this, it should be like that. The trick is to deal with what is."
♥ "Anyway, all comers welcome here!"
"'Comers' being the operative word," remarked Daniel.
"Let's carry on, shall we?" She held up the rubber gynecological model. "What's the opening of the uterus called? Anyone tell me?"
Daniel shot his hand up: "The vagina!"
"Um, no... actually."
"The cervix," said Mark.
"The cervix. Exactly! And the opening to the cervix?"
"The vagina!" said Daniel triumphantly.
"Yes! Or, as we call it, the birth canal, or, for Baby, the exit into a new world."
"Always two ways of looking at anything," said Daniel.
The instructor was now holding up a plastic baby and the rubber cut-in-half-woman. Honestly, how did any normal relationship ever survive a childbirth class?
♥ Of course, I was terribly gracious with my fans. Rather like the Queen, only pregnant and younger and not about to sit next to my mum in Grafton Underwood.
♥ Honestly. Am furious. There is actually a baby involved in this. They did actually both have sex with me and neither of them had a condom. They don't have to both disappear up their own asses.
♥ Feel like scales are falling from my eyes. Well, not literally scales. Not weighing scales. But realize I've been seeing men as all-powerful gods with the gift to decide whether I'm worthy or attractive or not, instead of human beings. I have not been thinking about what they feel.
♥ "Do you know one of the things I love most about you, Bridget?"
"What?" I said excitedly, thinking I was about to be praised: for being intelligent or pretty.
"That in all the time I've known you I've never once been bored by you. . . . There have been several near-death experiences, I've been on fire-both sexually in your bed and physically in your kitchen, I've been poisoned, I've been crazed with lust, furious, heartbroken, humiliated, embarrassed, ecstatic, soaked, covered in cake, confounded by your idiosyncratic, though largely valid, internal logic, insulted by drunks, forced into breaking-and-entering scenarios, fights, in legal extremis, third-world jail, embarrassing parental occasions, vomit, professional humiliation, but never for a single second have I been bored."
♥ "We live in a country-a country once renowned for its values-which increasingly is run by the village gossips, in the form of some aspects of the press. But here, in this village hall, with your clear rejection of a small attempt at spite, we see what it once meant, and still must mean, to be British. . . .
"Look at Her Majesty herself," continued Mark. . . . "Look at the tabloid drubbing she endured when her family was mired in confusion and infidelity. Look how she has soldiered on, still loving her family: loyal, decent, dutiful but elastic, as all families and communities must be. We are all distracted by the glamour ad shine of the evolving world. But we must stay rooted in who we are: in strength, decency, resilience, yes, but not in judgement."
♥ And, you see, Billy. This is why it means so much to me that you remember what Mark said that day. The world you're about to enter will be a different sea, with so much to do with how many likes you get on Facebook or who knows what; where everyone is showing off rather than sharing their sadnesses and fears and what they really feel; and "liking" the most famous, or the richest, or the prettiest, more than the most human, or the kindest friend. You are the Grafton Underwood New Generation. And before you know it, Mark and me will be throwing Turkey Curry Buffets, Brunch Time Karaoke and trying to set you up with Una Alconbury's granddaughter.
♥ 5 p.m. My flat. Baby still has not come. Feel like toddler sent to sit on potty and failing to produce poo, while adults wait, increasingly frostily, outside bathroom door. Maybe I actually am an elephant.
♥ 1 p.m.
Sender: Bridget Jones.
Subject: Baby!
It's a boy! Bridget Jones has given birth to a baby boy, William, Harry, 7 lbs. 8 oz. Both mother and baby are doing well.
1.15 p.m. Sounds a bit "samey."
p.s. Bridget died in childbirth.
1.16 p.m Heeheehee. OK, SAVE.
1.17 p.m. Oh my God. Oh my God. Have pressed SEND ALL.
♥ "Suck on this," said Mark, handing me a Popsicle. "The Queen, by the way, has just arrived at Grafton Underwood village hall."
"This isn't a Popsicle," I said. "It's a frozen sausage!"