Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Woman of a Certain EdgeLast century (OK, two years ago), Bridget Jones came to America. And she was welcomed with very open arms. Bridget?if you somehow managed to escape Bridget-mania?is the heroine of former London Independent columnist Helen Fielding's cult column. By the time Bridget reached these shores, she was all wrapped up in Bridget Jones's Diary, a collection of the columns. Her self-obsessed daily diary entries began with lists: calories ingested, alcohol units imbibed, cigarettes (Silk Cuts, of course) smoked, lies told to "fitness assessors." The content of the entries, always entertaining, went downhill in importance from there. The cast of characters included best friends, awful bosses, men-of-the-moment, and crazy family members. Insipid, narcissistic, over 30, and single, Bridget touched a collective cultural nerve. The media couldn't get enough of her. Women's magazines were chock-full o' Bridget. A Bridget Jones Internet search could turn up a zillion pages. Serious, well-respected book reviewers like Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times reviewed Fielding's book in Bridget's voice. "Average laughs out loud per page 2 (v.g.), identification with Bridget's character 100 percent (tragic), alcohol units consumed during study of book 6 (poor, but compulsive reading so mitigating factor)," wrote The Express (London). Time