If you haven’t heard there’s both good news and bad news in the return of the diary-writing singleton – Bridget Jones’s Diary.
The good news: Bridget Jones is back. The bad news: Mark Darcy is dead.
The revelation was leaked ahead of publication of "Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy”, the third book in Helen Fielding's series.
Bridget, created for a series of 1990s newspaper columns, was a 30-something Londoner looking for love and career fulfillment.
Published in 1996 “Bridget Jones’s Diary” turned Fielding from a freelance journalist into one of Britain's most successful writers. The novel and its 1999 sequel have sold 15 million copies.
In "Mad About the Boy" Bridget is still counting calories and booze, but she is now a 51-year-old widow with two young children, convinced she will never find romance again.
Helen Fielding said she had no choice but to kill Darcy so Bridget's story could move on.
"The book I wanted to write was not about domesticity, married life. It was about Bridget struggling with what life throws at you," she told ABC.
"It was Bridget being single with two children in the age of technology. And rediscovering her sexuality. She was a mother and she lost it amid the nappies and the busy-ness. I think lots of women go through that."
Fielding says breaking the news of Darcy's demise to Colin Firth, who starred opposite Renee Zellweger in the film adaptations of "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," was surprisingly tough.
"I was really nervous, and I had to make sure that he had someone with him and they were sitting down. And then I said, 'Colin, I've got something really bad to tell you.’
"And then I suppose I just said 'You're dead,' which is an odd thing to say to anyone. And we were both upset, but at the same time we were laughing," says Fielding.
In "Mad About the Boy," Bridget's romantic misadventures are overshadowed by loss and the fear of aging — but a strong comic vein remains.
As in the previous books, Bridget can lean on old friends Jude, Tom and Talitha, as well as disreputable former paramour Daniel Cleaver.
__small.png)
