Everyone has been going on about the film in my office recently, saying how funny it was and how close to the book it was portrayed. Well, being a cheapskate (and not wanting to visit the cinema alone) I bought the book from Tescos for £3.84(bargain) and settled down to read it. Wow, what a blinder, I’ve never read a book in 3 days, but at 300 pages it was very light and quick but extremely funny. I know a few of the basics about being a 30 something and being a ‘singleton/smug married’ and a lot of the scenarios are very true.

‘Based on Helen Fielding's diary in the Independent newspaper (something I didn’t know), this is a novel about a year in the life of a single girl on an optimistic but doomed quest for self-improvement and Inner Poise.’ Yeah, right! They’ve published my diary – the swines! I never even let my mother read my diary, now everyone knows what I get up to!

Seriously, if you’ve not picked up this book, borrow it, steal it or if you really have to - buy the damn thing, but you really need to read it (and that goes for the guys to!). The story is about Bridget, her friends Shazzer, Jude, Tom, Magda, her relationship with and between her mother and father (the storyline around these two is ingenious) and her quest to find a man and enjoy him…. for a while anyway. Despair, self-doubt, obsession and the use of really bad/good self help books are the way to go for Bridget, something of course I’ve never felt or used ;+).

This book goes from strength to strength, it keeps urging you to turn the pages, and even if it is just to see how many cigarettes she’s smoked the next day! But the thing is, if I tell you all the bits that made me laugh out loud, it’ll ruin the book, so I’m not going to! But wait for the time when she cooks the ‘blue soup’, hilarious! In my mind I had Kate Winslet playing Bridget, Joanna Lumley pl
aying the mother, and Hugh Grant playing Mr Darcy not Colin Firth. But as I’ve not seen it yet I’ll not compare.

Apparently, this is a reworking of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, not having read that book yet I can’t confirm or deny, but if it’s anything like this little belter it’s next on my list. I’m reading the sequel at the mo, it’s longer, has more swear words and the beginning is ab fab!

One criticism is that she doesn’t describe finding any grey hairs, now EVERYONE knows that you get paranoid about those – maybe she doesn’t have them,

All in all, even though it’s a quick read, I loved it, I went straight into Waterstones to buy the sequel ‘The Edge of Reason’, and as soon as I’ve got enough courage to visit the cinema on my own, I’ll be there!