If you like cloying affectation masquerading as insight, then you will enjoy the much hyped Bridget Jones's Diary. The alter ego of London journalist Helen Fielding, Bridget is a bundle of frail funk, preoccupied by short skirts, long nails and yo-yo dieting. She has mother issues, toxic-married-men issues, smoking issues and VCR-programming issues. She affects irony, so you know she is deadly serious about her postfeminist problems--find a gym, find a guy, find a low-cal chocolate. If only she would find a life. And a brain.
Rather than with Bridget, curl up with Nuala O'Faolain (Are You Somebody: The Accidental...