The zeitgeist all over again? Older, not wiser, Bridget Jones and the Twitterverse

Helen Fielding is probably likely to do for the middle-aged woman what she did for the 30-something singleton. Bridget Jones’s creator has been explaining why she wrote ‘Mad about the boy’, setting it firmly in the new world order that encompasses but is not limited to the twitterverse.

Ms Fielding says: “There were new things that were making me laugh in London and new things I wanted to write about: unexploded email box bombs, tweeting, Botox, over-stuffed lives, online dating, how to lose your born-again virginity, juggling work and parenthood, the way the image of (ugh) the ‘middle-aged’ woman is as outdated and mean as the tragic barren spinster was when Bridget was first struggling with it.”

it’s true enough that 50 is the new 40 and 40 the new 30. So Ms Fielding may be on to something that will once again be zeitgeist.

The older (but none the wiser) Bridget Jones finds that there’s a gap between reality and expectations from life. And that there’s nothing like a happy ending and our values are changing so much that true love can’t be taken as a guarantee – in life and in a novel. Ten weeks on from its appearance in stores, she’s number one in the hardback fiction bestseller lists.