Helen Fielding has written three previous novels: "Cause Celeb" (1994); "Bridget Jones's Diary" (1996); and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" (1999). She co-wrote the screenplays for the movie of "Bridget Jones's Diary" and the sequel based on "The Edge of Reason".
Helen Fielding was born in Yorkshire. She worked for many years in London as a newspaper and TV journalist, travelling as wildly and as often as possible to Africa, India and Central America. She is the author of Cause Celeb, Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. She co-wrote the screenplays for the movies of Bridget Jones's Diary and The Edge of Reason, starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. She now works full-time as a novelist and screenwriter and lives in London and Los Angeles.
Meet Bridget Jones's successor: international spy Olivia JoulesAthat's J.O.U.L.E.S, as in the unit of kinetic energy. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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 (sort of) 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 (1) a terrorist, (2) an international playboy, (3) a serial killer or (4) 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., Chlo? 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. (June 8) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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