'Bridget Jones's phenomenal success is not just because of her creator's brilliant wit, comic timing and social observation, but because she captures what - alas - it is like to be female ... I laughed out loud many time while reading The Edge of Reason. Fielding is excellent at a mixture of perception and comedy, capturing thoughts everyone has but hasn't actually expressed' Sally Emerson, Daily Mail 'Fielding has produced a genuinely original fictional voice. Like Anita Loos before her or, perhaps more pertinently, E. M. Delafield in her Diary of a Provincial Lady, she has created a devastatingly funny parody of her life and times ... Any woman of a certain age can recognize elements of Bridget in herself and will have enormous fun trying to spot them in the book' Rachel Simhon, Daily Telegraph 'Bridget Jones is no mere fictional character, she's the Spirit of the Age' Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard 'Could Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason really be as funny as its predecessor? The answer is yes ... Bridget, the original Singleton, is on ripping form in the sequel ... But she is far more than the patron saint of single women: she is everyman, or rather, everyperson' Virginia Blackburn, Express 'Helen Fielding has created the most enchanting heroine for the millennium' Jilly Cooper 'If you loved Bridget Jones's Diary, you'll love this; there is no diminution of the freshness or fun, or of Fielding's underlying intelligence. Success has not spoiled her -- she has simply gained in confidence and aplomb ... Fielding has a seam here she can mine endlessly until she herself gets bored, which I dare say will be long before her readers do' Mail on Sunday 'Bridget is probably the most successful comic creation of this decade, the most controversial and talked-about female fictional character since Lolita ... Bridget terminology has slipped into common parlance ... She is still on superb form; get someone to buy you this book for Christmas, read it through in one afternoon, hoot out loud at the many v. good bits' Stephanie Merritt, Observer 'Funnier and more accomplished than the original diary, and in fact takes recognition humour into a new dimension ... A glorious read, and there is a laugh on every page' Sunday Times 'Austen, as before, in Fielding's model, radically but affectionately updated ... There is, to be honest, a bit of Bridget Jones in a lot of the women and men of a certain generation, and to have those aspects so affectionately rendered, and both ridiculed and subversively celebrated, is a welcome treat' Robert Potts, TLS
