Growing Pains

contrast,were too plastic to appeal to the messy lives of EveryDitsyWoman.)

But then on,it hasn’t been easy to get the laughs going. Fielding seemed to have lost her touch with The Edge of Reason,and in this third installment,Mad About the Boy,she braves the anger of all Mark Darcy fans by sending him off to a noble death in Africa. Bridget is an affluent widow living in a large London house with two children,Billy,who believes life without an Xbox is EPIC FAIL!,and Mabel,who has a doll she calls Saliva and has not yet learnt discretion. “She says she’th thirty-five but she’th really fifty-one,” she says of her mom.

Parenting is the new rat race,and Bridget far away from the finishing line. She has traded Men are from Mars,Women are from Venus for French Children Don’t Throw Food but happily remains an imperfect mom — she sets sausages on fire,is late for the school run,forgetful about homework,even the last to notice an infection on Mabel’s finger,but always there for the cuddles. And while she might be in awe of competitive moms,their military efficiency brings out the sarcasm we’ve all loved. Sample message to school mailing list: “Billy came home from football last night wearing only one ear. Does

anyone have Billy’s other ear? It was VERY clearly labelled and I would appreciate its prompt return.”

But Fielding hasn’t bumped Mark off simply to have Bridget play mommy. The Born-Again Virgin must get laid,says her new friend Talitha,and locate her mislaid “sexual self”. Bridget (@Jonesy) gets back in the game with a fresh-faced 29-year-old toy boy,Roxby McDuff (@Roxster). Yes,Bridget Jones has discovered the internet,egghead profile pictures,wildly-named handles and Twitter followers. Though,if you think about it,the confessional diary entries,the obsessive recording of the minutiae of her life,told in snappy abbreviated language,presaged the generation who puts breakfast crumbs as well as heartbreak on its status messages — it was just one measure of how well Fielding captured the zeitgeist of the Noughties way back in 1996. Not surprisingly,Bridget takes to sexting like a duckface to a selfie,though it does take some time to get her Twitter following going — she stays off Facebook and its shiny,happy gallery (suspect despite bumbling,deep down,Mrs Darcy,is a v. wise woman after all).

But it is difficult to be mad about this one because Fielding doesn’t quite pull off Bridget at 51. The New Year resolutions that opened Bridget Jones’s Diary — “(I will) Go to gym three times a week,not merely to buy a sandwich; (I will not) sulk about having no boyfriend,but develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as woman of substance,complete without boyfriend,as best way to obtain boyfriend” — was a brilliantly funny character sketch. Her list of dating rules for the internet in this one are simply meh. The entire subplot about Bridget writing a screenplay based on Hedda Gabbler,a tragedy she believes the “Norwegian” Anton Chekov wrote,makes up much of the flabby middle of the book,when the laughs dry out,no matter how many fart jokes Fielding crowds in.

Mad About the Boy has its moments,Fielding is still quite sharp about the neuroses of modern parenting and dating. And this is a book that continues the original, winning premise of the series: the lives of modern women,without the inadequacies airbrushed and wrinkles Botoxed out. Bridget remains endearing,though her gaffes are less so. She is what her creator called “the original banana-skin girl”. She slips,she falls,her white coat is smeared with hot chocolate. We laugh at her,but really at ourselves.