SOURCE: “Me and Miss Jones,” in London Observer, November 21, 1999, p. 13.

In the following review, Merritt praises the universal appeal of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, but contends that Fielding should abandon the confessional diary genre after this book.

‘Bridget Jones is … no mere fictional character, she's the Spirit of the Age,’ gushed Melanie McDonagh in the Evening Standard last week, in a piece heralding the arrival of the sequel to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. ‘She's us, all over.’

Well—sorry, but she's not, and lots of us would be appalled by the suggestion. I was 22 when Bridget Jones's Diary was published, and remember being so horrified by the idea that I might end up like her that my friends and I made a spontaneous suicide pact for the end of our 29th year. Which is not to say that I didn't find the book hilarious. Bridget...