Mad About the Boy Book Review
An Entirely Informal Review on Mad About the Boy
Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding is the first book I read in 2016. I don't know what that says about my personality but you can't change the past so we're moving ahead and writing about it.Mad About the Boy is the third book in the Bridget Jones series. We rejoin Bridget fourteen years after she married Mark Darcy and she now has two kids. Some major things have changed in the past fourteen years and in the present time, we follow Bridget as she navigates single motherhood, Twitter, texting, and general boy craziness.
What I Love About Mad About the Boy
Throughout the book, you can hear Bridget's voice very clearly. Helen Fielding did an amazing job of pulling you into Bridget's world. The characters are still as endearing as they had always been. You miss the characters that are not in the book. The book is funny and endearing at the same time. Helen Fielding also introduces a couple of new characters that entirely makes up for the characters who failed to show up in the book.
What I Hate About Mad About the Boy
While my problem with Mad About the Boy isn't actually about the writing or the plot, my problem is actually with Bridget Jones as a character. Given her present situation regarding Mark Darcy (that I will not ruin here), she has a million and one things to be worrying about. But does she choose to make mothering her children top priority? Nope. Does she choose to make finding and keeping a stable job a priority? Nope! What she does choose to make a priority is dating various men younger than her and Twittering her life away and obsessing about both. While I was more forgiving about that kind of behavior when she was younger and single and child-less, I can't be now. She has children! She needs a job! Being boy crazy and obsessive about trivial things shouldn't be acceptable. Of course she should date if she wants to. There's no age limit in love. But what I wasn't ok with is her stumbling through, putting minimal effort in, and being shit at everything else: being a mother and looking for a job. What I also disliked is that women identify with her. I'm sure we all go through our obsessive spells. I have been known to go into an obsession spiral at least once every 4 months. But I surely will not let that get in the way of raising children and finding and holding down a job.
Favorite Mad About the Boy Quotes
“THEY ARE CHILDREN!’ Mr Wallaker roared. ‘They are not corporate products! What they need to acquire is not a constant massaging of the ego, but confidence, fun, affection, love, a sense of self-worth. They need to understand, now, that there will always – always – be someone greater and lesser than themselves, and that their self-worth lies in their contentment with who they are, what they are doing and their increasing competence in doing it.”
“You see, things being good has nothing to do with how you feel outside, it is all to do with how you are inside.”