Considering the number of writers who've tried, and generally failed, to do plummy Bridget Jones one better, it only makes sense that Fielding should take a vacation from the genre she spawned and seek greener pastures. Her new inspiration? Think Ian Fleming. Fielding's ridiculous, delicious, wildly improbable plot goes something like this: freelance journalist Olivia Joules ("as in the unit of kinetic energy"), formerly Rachel Pixley (her whole family got run over when she was 14), gets bumped from the Sunday Times's international coverage down to the style pages thanks to the titular imagination (e.g., a story about a "cloud of giant, fanged locusts pancaking down on Ethiopia"). In between ducking twittering PR reps and airheaded blondes at a Miami face cream launch party, she uncovers what looks like an al-Qaeda plot, headed by a dreamy Osama bin Laden look-alike, who is either a terrorist, an international playboy, a serial killer or all of the above. Languid, mysterious Pierre Feramo returns Olivia's interest, and thus begins an around-the-world adventure that has plucky Olivia eventually recruited by MI6. In addition to the fun spy gear (e.g., Chloé shades fitted with a nerve-agent dagger) there are kidnappings, bomb plots and scuba-diving disasters. Olivia is slim, confident and accomplished; ostensibly, she's "painstakingly erased all womanly urges to question her shape, looks, role in life", etc. But she still has her bumbling Jonesian moments, and though she may not need a man, she'll get one in the end. What's wrong with the book: two-dimensional characters, dangling plot threads, the questionable taste of al-Qaeda bombings in an escapist, comic spy novel. What's right: girl-power punch, page-turning brio and a new heroine to root for.
Helen Fielding (1958) is an English writer best known for her novels about Bridget Jones – a single woman in London at about 30, trying to make sense of her personal and love life. Fielding's famous book “Bridget Jones' Diary” began its life as an anonymous column in “The Independent” in 1995. In the next year it was released as a novel, followed by a sequel in 1999 called “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”. The two novels have been published in forty countries and sold over fifteen million copies. In 2001 and 2004 both of them were also adapted into films (under the same titles as the books) and have achieved worldwide success. The original Bridget Jones was inspired by Jane Austen's novels - “Pride and Prejudice” and “Persuasion”.
Before starting to write about Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding published her first novel - “Cause Celeb” (1994) which was not very successful. In 2003 the fifth book of Fielding - “Olivia Joules and The Overactive Imagination”, was published. It is a light-hearted spy thriller which is set in Miami, Los Angeles, England and the Sudan.
With her novels about Bridget Jones Helen Fielding has become one of the leading authors of the literary genre known as chick lit.
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