Meander Miss Jones

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Oh dear, oh dear. By the time Bridget has landed in a Thai prison (don't ask) more than halfway through Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Viking; 338 pages; $24.95), the reader is beyond caring. Hapless is one thing--as the tremendous popularity of Bridget Jones's Diary showed, hapless can be endearing. But hapless with no sign of a learning curve, in a sequel that has none of the novelty of the original yet is much longer--now that will try the patience of even a Bridget fan.

Bridget Jones's Diary, originally a column by Helen Fielding in Britain's Independent newspaper (and soon to be a movie), was one of the publishing phenomenons of the 1990s. It has sold 4 million copies worldwide to date and been published in 30 countries. A very funny account of the minor woes and epiphanies of a 30-ish single woman living in London, it spawned a host of pale imitations and a humorless debate about Bridget's supposedly debilitating effect on the progress of women. (My two cents: Fielding is a wonderful comic novelist who obviously struck some vein of truth. To condemn Bridget for being a more pathetic version of the rest of us is to miss the point.)

But some hits cry out for sequels, whereas other books are fine just as they are. We may occasionally wonder what happens after Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy (after all, he's kind of difficult), but Jane Austen's subsequent novels are variations on a theme, not repetitions of one. With her modern-day version of Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand, Fielding got caught in the vise of a lucrative contract and a punishing deadline, and the new book has an air of desperation. With the same diary format, complete with alcohol and cigarette logs, and the same wacky circle of friends, Bridget seems to be living her own private Groundhog Day, unable to learn from her mistakes, move forward or pull herself together the tiniest bit. The plot--and is there ever a plot--is driven by her on-again, off-again romance with Mark Darcy. The fact that the reader is so much smarter and more observant than Bridget is, this time round, irritating rather than suspenseful.

--By Elizabeth Gleick