Bridget Jones's Diary

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds overnight? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier (repulsive, horrifying notion)); alcohol units 2 (excellent) cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow); number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)?"

Bridget Jone's Diary charts a devastatingly self-aware, hilarious year in the life of a thirty-something Singleton. Here is the compulsively readable, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of her permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement--a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1 1/2 inches, visit the gym three times a week not merely to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a reasonable adult, and not fall for any of the following: misogynists, megalomaniacs, people with girlfriends or wives, emotional fuckwits, alcoholics, workaholics, chauvinists, or perverts. And learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Caught between her Singleton friends (who are all convinced they will end up dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian), the Smug Marrieds (whose dinner parties offer ever-new opportunities for humiliation), and crazed parental attempts to marry her off to a rich divorce in a diamond-patterned sweater. Bridget struggles to keep her life on an even keel--or at least afloat. Whenever her plans meet with disaster, as they invariably do, she... --front flap