Bridget's here at last

It's been a couple of weeks now, I mean, since I finished Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.
I've been on holiday and that delayed this post. Anyway, let's get down to it now.
Bridget Jones's Diary has a lot to do with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and in many ways for me it reads like a Pride and Prejudice from the 20th century. Both books even share a character with the same name, Mark Darcy. Both take up the point of view of a spontaneous woman, who, despite her own claims for being open minded and unconventional, turns out to be prejudiced and has to go through a number of obstacles to finally end up with Darcy. Elizabeth and Bridget both have dysfunctional families and impossible mothers who never tire of trying to marry them for the richest man in sight.
Fielding's chosen diary form achieves a very honest tone and despite the absurdities of Bridget's life a lot of it actually rings true: think of the busy city life she lives, her work and relationship problems, for example. By means of a hilariously funny and fresh style, Fielding pokes fun at all modern city obessions like the stressful Christmas shopping, the mania for self-help books, the feminist theories, the eternal pursuit of the perfect figure, which results in the almost inborn memory for calory amounts; it's like knowing the times table, Bridget says at one point. Bridget lives alone and is much closer to her friends Sharon, Jude and Tom than to her own family; she is a modern city girl through and through, complete with her inability to cook anything or to keep her flat in order. Her attempts to convince herself that singletons rule is put under merciless pressure from the smug marrieds. Her frank indignation at the commercial and manipulative nature of occassions such as St. Valentine's Day and Christmas is quite endearing: "The whole thing is ridiculous and meaningless. Complete commercial exploitation." Yet she admits being quite excited about 14 February and such polarizing atttitudes go through the entire novel giving lending a lot of length and breadth to Bridget's character.
Despite the fact that she doesn't get on well with her family, it is her mother's involvement with a conman that brings Bridget together with Mark in the same way that Lydia's elopement brings together Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
After all her worries and troubles, Bridget deservedly gets her happy ending just as Elizabeth does, but not without admitting a truth universally known (even though uttered by an "adulteress, criminal's accomplice and G-list celebrity, ie her mother): "Don't say 'what', say 'pardon', darling, and do as your mother tells you."
All in all, a book worth reading and rereading both for its fun and refreshingly honest look on modern working women.