Bridget Jones is back and, incredibly, given the commercial appetite for sequels, it's been 14 years since word of that most famously single of singletons last hit the bookshelves.
And it's a rather odd, if enormously enjoyable creation.
Bridget is now 51, a widow with two small children, a house in Primrose Hill, a diet on the go and a toy-boy in the offing.
After four years in mourning, her friends – now grown ups with successful careers – decide it's time for Bridget to find a new man. Cue an amusing education in the new rules of dating, Twitter and haphazard parenting.
The problem is that Mad About the Boy feels anachronistic: if Bridget, as she says, is too young to be a widow, 2013 is too late to be publishing a novel in which Twitter is dangerously new and texting while under the influence is still to be warned against.
But no one could begrudge the likeable Bridget, who stumbles from one parenting or emotional disaster to the next, finally to be rewarded with another Darcy-like true love.
cdight@thenational.ae
Bridget tweets on life, love
The Bridget Jones character will always be likeable, Clare Dight writes, but this sequel feels anachronistic, with dated scenes about the wonders of Twitter and texting.
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