LETTERS Bored by Bridget
Sir: 'The initial reluctance to accept Bridget [Jones]', writes Vicky Ward, 'wasn't simply anglophobic' ('OK, you can write about Britain', 25 July). She then quotes from a New York Times writer's criticism of Helen Fielding's heroine.
Few if any British reviewers have said a word against Bridget Jones. She has been swept along by waves of media hype which has made people feel they must read her or they'll be missing out on something impor- tant.
Yet the book has been wildly overpraised. Only occasionally and very mildly amusing, it is for most of its 307 pages thin, flat and colourless. The relentlessly repetitive noting of the woman's weight and food, drink and cigarette intake becomes extraordinarily tedious. Making the everyday stresses, frus- trations and annoyances of life interesting requires something better than Ms Field- ing's drab, dull and monotonous style. One laughs neither with Bridget nor at her. Hav- ing struggled to the end of her Diary, the main feeling is relief at having at last escaped all that oppressive, dumbed-down self-obsession.
Since writers invariably copy last year's success, there may arise a short-lived school-of-Bridget-Jones literary fashion. Already in the bookshops there is some- thing called Does My Bum Look Big in This? whose simpering vacuousness makes one wonder why anyone thought it worth printing and binding.
Vicky Ward notes that in the United States, as here, the book has been launched with a barrage of publicity to ensure its suc- cess. Without that, perhaps, stacks of copies would already be gathering dust as remainders.
M.G. Sherlock
47 Probyn House, Page Street, London SW1
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