Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, first published in 1996, is a satirical novel about a single woman in her thirties who hopes to lose weight, improve her career, eliminate her vices, gain self-control, and find love. Her ambitions are repeatedly thwarted by her tendency to indulge, be lazy, be cynical, and to find emotionally unavailable men attractive.
Framed as a diary, the novel depicts a year in Bridget Jones's life. As a single woman in her thirties, Bridget deals constantly with condescending questions about why she isn't married yet. Meanwhile, she observes the dysfunction in the marriages in her social sphere, including that of her parents, who separate so Bridget's mother can pursue an affair with a younger Portuguese man, Julio. Bridget finds solace in her unmarried friends, who gather often to get drunk and denounce the "emotional fuckwittage" of men in their thirties. Bridget enjoys dating her boss, Daniel, after a prolonged taboo flirtation, but she is devastated by the revelation that he has been seeing another woman in secret. Mark Darcy, the son of family friends, impresses Bridget when he helps sort out Bridget's mother's involvement in Julio's time-share scam. The book ends with Mark seeing that Julio returns to England to face prosecution. Mark then confesses his love to Bridget, and they start a relationship.
Exploring themes of marital strife, friendship, romance, indulgence, and dieting, Bridget Jones's Diary satirizes late-20th-century middle-class British social conventions and the difficulty of finding love in a cynical world. The book began as an anonymous column Fielding wrote for The Independent, and she based elements of the novel on Jane Austen's 1813 Pride and Prejudice. Bridget Jones’s Diary became a bestseller and was followed by an equally successful film adaptation and several sequels.
