SOURCE: “What's the Problem?,” in Spectator, Vol. 283, No. 8938, November 27, 1999, p. 52.

In the following review, de Botton lists eleven generalizations about men and women upon which Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is based, and contends that Fielding has cleverly situated her humor around dark and tragic human issues.

Any man reading Helen Fielding's new book [Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason] will laugh but end up feeling wretched. Why are we so awful? Or, as Bridget Jones puts it, such ‘fuckwits’? Bridge is thirtysomething, solvent, attractive and intelligent and yet, despite gargantuan efforts, can't find a husband. All the men she meets have ‘commitment problems’; they sleep with her, stumble along in a relationship for a few months and then go and have sex with someone else. Sadly, Bridget isn't alone. The last volume of her diaries sold a million copies in the UK. This one is a...