Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Format: eBook
Read: July 2025

I first read this when I was a teenager, it must have been when the film came out on home release around 2001-2 because I distinctly remember the copy I had came in a box set with the VHS of the movie! By that working out I would have been about 14!

I remember enjoying it then, and I don’t think I got anything more out of it for being closer to Bridget’s age now (actually, I’m older now, I think she’s 34 in this one). I think even at 14, I thought Bridget was immature and her obsession with calories and smoking so many cigarettes was ridiculous!

I still found it to be a very enjoyable and easy read! Bridget – for her many flaws – is an endearing character, and it’s amazing how much personality Fielding is able to get through for the supporting characters within the limits of the diary format. Especially for Daniel Cleaver, Perpetua and Bridget’s ridiculous mother, Pam.

There are many things about the book (and the movie) that are very dated now! The casual counting, cigarettes, friends actually speaking on the telephone, which is also a landline (including using 1471!), and a whole section where Bridget can’t work out how to record the telly on her VHS player! The stereotyping of Bridget’s gay friend Tom is also very 2000s, including the use of the word “poof.”

Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy are both still very charming in their different ways. Having so recently rewatched Pride & Prejudice (1995 BBC adaptation), the story parallels were fresh in my mind! There is even a bit where Bridget watches it and talks about her love for Colin Firth, and his real-life relationship with Jennifer Ehle!

I enjoyed it immensely, but I do always seem to end the story (and the movie) wondering quite what Mark Darcy sees in Bridget… He’s obviously wonderful, but they never communicate very well, and their connection doesn’t quite come through for me.

As for the movie, I decided to rewatch that after reading, and they do make quite a lot of changes. They drop the fraud subplot with her mother (which is the parallel for Mr Darcy riding to the rescue for the Bennetts), so the last bit of the story differs. There isn’t any nonsense with Mark reading her diary and her running in the snow in her pants. There also is no fight in the street, but by god, I’m glad they added that glorious scene into the movie! Overall, it is a good adaptation… And Hugh and Colin were perfectly cast.

I was also thrilled to recognise Lynn (Felicity Montagu) from Alan Partridge as Perpetua and Gaius Baltar (James Callis) as Bridget’s friend Tom!

I rewatched the second movie (The Edge of Reason) and it was fun, but it repeats too many of the same beats from the first film, and honestly, I still am not convinced that Mark and Bridget have any chemistry. But I’ll definitely take him. I was debating reading the second book – I don’t think I ever did read more than book 1 – but I think it depends on whether I find it for cheap somewhere!

Quotes

You completely forget the fact that when you were twenty-two and you didn’t have boyfriend or meet anyone you remotely fancied for twenty-three months you just thought it was a bit of a drag. The whole thing builds up out of all proportion, so finding a relationship seems a dazzling, almost insurmountable goal, and when you do start going out with someone it cannot possibly live up to expectations. 

Relatable, this was ages 27 to 32 for me! Page 102.

8.55 p.m. Decide to ignore that page. Turn to ‘Timer-controlled recordings with VideoPlus’: ‘1. Meet the requirements for VideoPlus.’ What requirements? Hate the stupid video. Feel exactly the same as feel when trying to follow signposts on roads. Know in heart that signposts and video manual do not make sense but still cannot believe authorities would be so cruel as to deliberately dupe us all. Feel incompetent fool and as if everyone else in world understands something which is being kept from me.

A true blast from the past, especially funny as apparently nobody know Bridget knows is able to figure this out! Page 109

I realized that I have spent so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional ideal is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.

I had hoped we’d moved past this kind of thinking in 2025, but I think we’re about to have a cultural regression now all the celebrities are stick thin again. Depressing. Page 178.

It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head against a tree.

Loved! Page 190