"There's a new Bridget Jones book coming out this fall, and I would really, really like to review it," I announced to my editor, Steve, a Hemingway scholar who does not share my love for "9 to 5" or "Heathers."
He gave me a sarcastic look of regret. "Sure, it's all yours."
Undaunted, I scribbled "Bridget Jones book!" on my desk calendar's October page, then spilled coffee over the whole year.
May
Steve forwarded me an announcement from the publisher: The title will be "Mad About the Boy."
Babies, I thought. Or a younger guy. Or Mark Darcy frolicking with their little boy.
Oh, how I missed Bridget. Author Helen Fielding's late-'90s everywoman was a London-dwelling hot mess prone to girdle mishaps. Fielding constructed her novel from diary entries detailing Bridget's wildly wobbling weight, alcohol intake, cigarettes smoked and insecure sexual daydreams. But an acerbic wit always slipped out between bites of chocolate croissant.
"It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party," she observed. "It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting 'Cathy!' and banging your head against a tree."
Eventually Renee Zellweger brought the accident-prone, hung-over singleton heroine to the big screen, where she proved to be just as awesome, blurting out in a job interview, "I've had to leave my job because I shagged my boss."
I even liked the sequel, "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," before they made the movie version into a "Cathy" cartoon instead of sticking with the plot derived from Jane Austen's "Persuasion."
Early September
Steve dropped the advance review copy of "Mad About the Boy" on my desk. It landed next to the pilot DVD of a show called "Beauty Queen Murders."
"Ooo! Yaaay!" I exclaimed, earning another pained shake of the head. "I strongly relate to Bridget's ... path in life," I tried to explain. Steve put out a hand:
"Say no more."
Late September
Surely snitching the format for this review from its source material requires that I make up cutesy monikers for my husband and 2-year-old son as Bridget would in her own diary entries, so ... they can be Mr. Skeptical and Prince Harry.
Mr. Skeptical, who pretends he hasn't watched the six-hour BBC "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries with me even when we're alone, looked up from his laptop and asked me if I'd heard the news about the new book (spoiler alert).
"So have you seen the people freaking out because the guy named Darcy who's named after the other guy named Mister Darcy is dead? In like, the book? And it's the same guy?"
Translation: Word was out that Fielding had killed off Mark Darcy, the love of Bridget's life, based on - cloned from? - Elizabeth Bennet's lover in "Pride and Prejudice." And she did this after making sure Bridget and I pictured him as an honorable, smoldering Colin Firth from the beginning.
OK, that's just really ... mean.
Oct. 4, 6 p.m.
Right. Just got home from work and realized I should really have read the book, not just thumbed through the prologue. After Prince Harry is bathed, his light-up ladybug is deployed and the basset hound fed and soothed, I will make friends again with Bridget.
7:45 p.m.
Really hoping new Bridget book is not about raising a 2-year-old with the emotional stability of Alec Baldwin. Because a little escapism would be nice.
9:45 p.m.
Finally, will just relax with hound dog on couch and read.
10:15 p.m.
So. Bridget is now 51 and raising two kids alone. She introduces them in vivid scenes of simultaneous intestinal flu geysers. The British spell it diarrhoea, really? Oh, and they have head lice, which they call nits.
Tempted to watch another episode of "House of Cards" on Netflix to better emulate Kevin Spacey's ambition before trying again.
Oct. 5, 4 p.m.
Prince Harry just left for a sleepover with his Auntie. There is really no excuse now not to concentrate on the book. Kevin Spacey would have had the ending leaked to the press by now.
4:15 p.m.
The only entity on Earth with more false starts than me at this point is the K-State offensive line. What is going on, Wildcats???
4:30 p.m.
Right. Focus. Plenty of time. Aggravating K-State game on mute, and Bridget - let's see - has managed to let her kids spread nits through her entire social circle.
"Fantastic evening taking out Talitha's hair extensions. Was really satisfying, though incredible challenging, as had to rub oil on the glue bits, and pull out, then inspect for nits. Was a bit like Anne Hathaway dying of a bad haircut in 'Les Miserables,' except more moaning and crying."
Talitha is one of the friends who slapped Bridget back to her senses four years after "what happened to Mark." After a disturbing trip through another eating disorder, the widow Jones no longer weighs 175 pounds (horrors!) and has signed up for Twitter, where she strikes up a flirtation with a handsome 29-year-old.
Because that's how Twitter works. Every time.
Their first date includes a lot of vomit, which they refer to, like the Brits they are, as sick.
4:50 p.m.
Seriously, what happened to Mark Darcy?
4:55 p.m.
After hundreds of pages of all-too-familiar fumblings and one-liners, I have reached the pages where Bridget, wallowing in grief, digs out the box of newspaper clippings about how Mark died.
5:10 p.m.
Now I'm sobbing in tandem with Bridget while she remembers her 2-year-old son running through the house crying "I lost Dada!" Why can't the funny-sexy chapters pack that kind of punch?
Mr. Skeptical, confused, attributes my swollen red eyes to allergies and college football.
5:12 p.m.
So. Widowed Bridget is a self-absorbed one-percenter with a full-time nanny and a smartphone glued to her face while she maintains a junior high-esque infatuation through pages of texts and tweets that are mainly fart jokes.
Am I really expected to care about this kid with washboard abs and Oedipal issues who goes by ... Roxster? And since when did Bridget start bragging about her Cirque du Soleil flexibility in bed? Too much detail about the wheelbarrow position, Bridge! Especially with those kids in the next room.
5:15 p.m.
Clearly, this Roxster cat, with his charming-yet-flaky ways, is Frank Churchill from Jane Austen's "Emma." Where's the serious-minded, sometimes-judgmental love interest who goes by Mr. Something, as in Mr. Knightley?
5:17 p.m.
There he is.
He's criticizing her for getting Botox.
Sigh.
5:30 p.m.
Must admit, the naughty Bridget of old shows up every now and again, and motherhood has provided a bevy of tiger moms for her to taunt. "I'll bring the vodka," she volunteers in the email chain devoted to stocking the school field day with healthy snacks. "We drink it neat without mixers, all agreed?"
6 p.m.
Gah. It's not just that Bridget hasn't learned anything about men, or love, or herself. She can't even humiliate herself in new ways.
From "The Edge of Reason": "... I had applied dark gray eyeshadow to my cheeks instead of blusher: the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, obviously, as packaging identical."
From "Mad About the Boy": "... have put waterproof mascara on top lip as same Laura Mercier packaging as lip gloss and will not come off. Oh, God. Am going to be late with black lips."
Surely it is not normal to want to read the movie script Bridget is writing rather than anything more about her? Especially since she's actually sold the rights under the working title "The Leaves in His Hair: Based on the play Hedda Gabbler (sic), by Anton Chekhov (double sic)."
6:30 p.m.
Just realized the whole point of Bridget adapting "Hedda Gabler." So that she could scream, from the depths of her depression, at the blithely cheerful faces around her, "It's not a rom-com, it's a tragedy!"
6:45 p.m.
But after that great setup, Bridget got another rom-com ending anyhow. It wasn't even interesting - that's the tragedy.
6:55 p.m.
(Spoiler alert) It didn't work out between the 51-year-old mom and the untethered hipster 20 years her junior? Shocking. At least the British don't have an alternative word for cougar, as the speedy felines are not indigenous. And they spell inevitable and predictable the same way, too.