Salon.com > Helen Fielding

The return of Bridget Jones

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:43:00 +0000

Best-selling author Helen Fielding will be bringing back her Bridget Jones character in a third book due out in November, her publisher Knopf announced. However, the "singleton" obsessed with tallying her nicotine and alcohol intake may be a thing of the past.

"My life has moved on, and Bridget's will move on, too," said Fielding in a press release. Before the Atlantic forced us to consider whether women could have it all, Bridget Jones, unhappy at work and in love, was trying to have something — anything at all. Her confessional style — standing in as an exaggerated avatar of Fielding, perhaps — presaged the openness of the blog era. Bridget Jones, once a revolutionary for asking questions no one else would, now feels like a face in the crowd.

Fielding, who has been married and divorced, has experienced many changes since "Bridget Jones's Diary" began its life as a series of newspaper columns in the 1990s. We don't know what's happened to Bridget, but it's a safe guess that she has likely quit smoking.

Spare us the Bridget Jones sequel!

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:12:00 +0000

It's like the '90s never left us. Bridget Jones is making an unwelcome return. Author Helen Fielding announced this week that her iconic heroine is returning for a third installment of her adventures, this time with a 21stcentury flair. Where once she gained fame for her notorious diary, Jones will now open each chapter with her tweets. Of course she will. "It's more like 'number of Twitter followers: 0. Still no followers. Still no followers,'" Fielding explained on the Women's Hour radio show. Fielding went on to say that "The new novel is set in present-day London, with an entirely new scenario for Bridget," which, depending on your appetite for such things, is either a sweet opportunity to revisit a beloved character or blecch, yuck, oh God, why. Whyyyyy? You can probably guess where I stand. And just in case a new novel isn't enough, there's also a differently plotted movie sequel in the works, reuniting Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant for a baby-themed romp, and a stage musical as well.