Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding

Again! For a book group, this time, to be fair! In fact, this was a blast, we had it for the Jane Austen Book Club (with only 6 novels and some unfinished works and juvenalia, there's a very finite amount of genuine Austen!) so I've been trying to branch out (see Bride and Prejudice, etc). We had fun with this one, but the general concensus was that
1. Elizabeth Bennet would never make blue soup.
and
2. The best thing about any Mr. Darcy is his real-estate.

Mrs. Tim Christie, by D.E. Stevenson

Let me first say that this was delightful. Then let me say that it was terifically upsetting to read, because I think something strange has happened.

I came across this book (last published in 1974, although a reprint is scheduled for 2011) because I was looking for read-alikes for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, as Guernsey etc. is the Read Across Rhode Island book of the year. I can't remember exactly where I saw it mentioned, but it sounded good enough that I requested it through interlibrary loan, got it, and there my troubles started.

Mrs. Tim Christie is an officer's wife in the years before WWII, and the book is her daily diary. It is funny, witty, effortlessly charming, and told in an incredibly distinct and recognizable voice. There are quirks of the voice (and I'm sure English majors have a word for this) that make it unique- almost. As I read, horror seeped into me, because, I kid you not, Mrs. Tim Christie's voice was not new to me. It was the same voice that was used, to great effect, in Bridget Jones' Diary. I can't say what an odd shock that was.

I also can't imagine (though I suppose I could hope) that this is accidental, or a coincidence.

I can't find any mention of Helen Fielding crediting D.E. Stevenson, anywhere, with inspiring her. Now, Bridget Jones' Diary, as most know, is a kind of take-off of Pride and Prejudice, as are about eleventy-billion other books and movies, and the homage to Austen is made clear throughout the book, with Bridget and her friends watching the Colin Firth movie version of P+P, Mark Darcy obviously being an updated Mr. Darcy, and so on and so on. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Bridget Jones is built upon Jane Austen and P+P. That didn't stop the book from being greeted, joyfully and with great praise, by pretty much the whole world.

Another reader has noted a resemblance in voice between Stevenson and E.M. Delafield's Portrait of a Provincial Lady (another book I adore)- but I really feel that Helen Fielding must have read the Mrs. Tim Books (and almost certainly must have come across both D.E. Stevenson and E.M. Delafield in her own reading.) I just wish she credited them as openly as she has Jane Austen.

Bridget Jones' Diary, by Helen Fielding

Re-read.
One of my all time favorite books, that I have probably read about 80 or so times, enjoying it every time.
The reason I re-read it though, this time, isn't that I needed my Bridget fix (and I have been known to enlist friends' help in finding one of the 3 or so copies that seem to float around the house, saying desperately that I "need Bridget" like other people sometimes "need chocolate" or "need a drink") but that I found something strange, and disturbing, that I will go into in the post about Mrs. Tim Christie, by D.E. Stevenson.
Despite something that I find worrisome and stressful and upsetting, fretting about it doesn't detract from the delight of the artifact, the fun of the book itself, so I want to say how much I adore this book. To not like the book would be like saying that you can't like, say, Hills Like White Elephants because Hemingway was a misogynistic jerk, or that Kobe Bryant's 3-point shots aren't beautiful because he has a complicated personal life, and so on. The "art" is separate from the artist.

I still love Bridget Jones' Diary.