topics: |  fiction | uk | gender

Men: Can't live with them, Can't live without

 
A humorous take on the single life, from a 33-year-old woman's
perspective. This diary (written two years after Bridget Jones), covers
one year (like BJ) - and the obsessions are rather similar to BJ.  The
storyline - she get's the man rather suddenly in the end - is nothing
spectacular but the language is fresh - the endless litany of wanting to be
thinner; e.g. wearing a minimiser bra, "obviously the flesh has to go
somewhere... felt like I'd got a couple of squishy cucumbers trapped under
the armpits" p.40.  Occasional discourses on sundry topics like Chinese
macrobiotic tea ("tastes a lot like lavatory cleaner w old coins soaked in
it"), and her many self-doubts, mostly about clothes and looks (midnight
weigh-ins), but also PNBs (Potential New Boyfriends):

   saw Attractive New Andy from Marketing.  I bumped into him in the lift, he
   did smile at me but I'me absolutely sure he moved to make room for me
   when I got in, like he was thinking, "Oh, she's quite fat, I'll have to
   move right over to the other side."  He did actually suggest we have[?had] a
   drink together some time but I'm sure that's because he felt guilty about
   having moved to make room for me...

Her best friend Sally has "Lovely Dan" who loves her exactly the way she is,
but then that's easy, because Sally is gorgeous (though she has a
thick-ankles problem but that's easy to hide.

Breast enlargement

   lunch with Sally and of course the inevitable came up again - breast
   enlargement. [she feels her breasts are] more like old socks with
   tangerines dropped in the bottom

the downstairs man is often having sex, and noisily at that

   don't know if it's the same girl, this one is making very peculiar noises,
   it sounds like she's coxing for the Oxford boat-racing team.  Probably
   what every man dreams of... p.30

at a party, she is "the first one sefrved pudding, which I innocently and
politely accepted before seeing both May and Tory demur! When will I ever
learn?"

   You spend masses of money on sexy bras and pants and end up having tghe
   first sexual encounter with the man of your dreams in a candlewick
   dressing gown and your old school knickers on.

    She's the kind of woman who say 'darling' every time they speak to their
    husbands but always between gritted teeth, so it instead of sounding
    like an endearment, it sounds like 'you steaming piece of shit'.

   Cracked a heel on the way home from work.  How embarrassing is that?
   Particularly seeing as I did that thing of carrying on walking without
   realizing that one of the heels had dropped off.  186

On the whole, yet another take on the singleton life.  An easy read, not
without some bits of insight. - AM