SOURCE: “Why I Love Bridget Jones,” in New Statesman, Vol. 128, No. 4446, July 26, 1999, p. 51.

In the following review, Gilbert lauds Bridget Jones's Diary for spawning a new genre of fiction by women writers which is typically comical and lighthearted, and features female protagonists who are obsessed with being thin.

Helen Fielding has created a contemporary Molly Bloom.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, is one of the most important novels of the 1990s. Not only has its phenomenal popularity spawned numerous imitations, it has introduced an entirely new fictional voice. Bridget Jones and its imitations—what I call “thinnist fiction” because of the female protagonists obsession with their weight and because of the novels’ light, comic tone—have been widely vilified: by feminists for trivialising women's problems and implicitly suggesting that what a girl needs is a good man; and by literary critics for not being, well, proper literature...