With “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” streaming, the novelist talked in an email interview about what moviemakers keep cutting from adaptations of her best sellers. SCOTT HELLER
Describe your ideal reading experience.
I love a vacation binge-read — I read all 800 pages of “The Goldfinch” in Greece (that’s Greece, not Greek). I also love it when you’re waiting for a novel to come out and can’t put it down when it does. It was like that with “Atonement.” I managed to escape and hide when it arrived and read it all at one sitting.
What kind of reader were you as a child?
I was crazy for novels as a child and teenager. I read several a week, never distinguishing between heavy and light. Enid Blyton, Jane Austen, Jackie Collins, Thomas Hardy — I loved them all. Ironically, the joy was dampened when I went to university to read English. I’d worked as an au pair in France all summer and somehow failed to tackle the reading list. I ended up trying to read the entire works of Dickens in three days. I lost my reading mojo for some years.
Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?
I’ve got into trouble for not reading a book: “Bleak House.”
What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?
“Bleak House.” And I’ve got into terrible trouble for giving quotes for book covers. My quote once got a bad review: “There is only one thing wrong with this novel — the cover quote from Helen Fielding. Whilst it is true, it is also trite.”
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
“Ernest Hemingway on Writing.” It’s a brilliant collection of quotes about writing from his letters. I don’t know what I’d do without it.
What books are on your night stand?
I have a little shelf of favorite classics with nice covers, like “Madame Bovary,” “The Quiet American,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Far From the Madding Crowd,” to make me happy and in case I feel like stealing one of their plots. Then there’s always a couple of novels I’m reading — I’ve just finished “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” and another I’m loving is “Enter Ghost,” with an Israel/Palestine backdrop. And there’s always a self-help book — I have a huge collection, inspiring but sadly ineffective.
What’s the last great book you read?
“The Great Gatsby.” I’m reading it a lot this year trying to figure out how he did it. It’s exquisite. I’m not planning to steal the plot, though. Definitely not. No sir!
Whose diaries have you read and enjoyed most?
I like funny diaries or letter collections — P.G. Wodehouse, Noël Coward — but I also love newspaper diaries (that’s the way I started writing Bridget Jones). I loved Tina Brown’s diary in The Sunday Times. My favorite line was from her friend who wrote in her diary, “Tina came back today … the frizzy-haired fart.”
What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t?
“Tristram Shandy.” It’s supposed to be the first great comic novel. I just can’t make myself find it funny.
What’s your feeling about romantasy?
I’m not a fan of over-labeling genres. (This may be to do with Barbara Walters once introducing me as the “grandmother of chick-lit” — I hope she at least meant “godmother.”) It seems odd there’s a snobbery about escapist fiction when people are confident about binge-watching escapist TV. Happy endings are just about where you choose to stop the story.
Is there an aspect of Bridget Jones that has never made it into one of the movies, and you wish it would?
I always long for more voice-over, and the comedy of Bridget’s observations and inner voice. There’s a scene I keep on writing where Bridget challenges her Mum about undermining her, and never making her feel “good enough.” It’s a huge moment of realization and change for Mum. I like arcs like that and I really don’t like stereotyping older women, but that scene always gets cut. One day. …
What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?
Wodehouse’s “Summer Lightning” never fails me.
The last book that made you cry?
“Knife,” by Salman Rushdie.
How do you sign books for your fans?
One of my favorite things is talking to Bridget fans when they’ve queued for a signing. They usually want to tell me their own “Bridget moment” or how a book cheered them up in a difficult time. When I’ve got a pile of books or bookplates sent to sign, I would never ever use a stamp or a squiggle. I think that would be terrible karma. I love it when I own a signed book by another writer. You feel the connection.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Jane Austen — with Wodehouse mixing the cocktails. That would be a #strongnight.
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