By Leanne Potts
Journal Staff Writer
In the late 1990s Helen Fielding introduced the world to Bridget Jones, a 30-something single woman whose life was defined by her inability to live up to the thin-thighed, Gucci-wearing, date-bait fantasies depicted in women's magazines.
Millions of women around the world saw themselves in Bridget, making Fields' best-selling comic novel "Bridget Jones's Diary" a pop culture phenomenon. (And a movie starring Renée Zellweger.)
Fifteen million copies and a sequel novel later, Fielding has given us a heroine for a new age: The name is Joules. Olivia Joules. She's a freelance fashion journalist who infiltrates international Arab terrorism rings when she isn't writing stories about a hot new face cream or ogling a muscular hotel bellboy.
It's Bridget Jones gone James Bond. Or as a character in Fielding's new comedy thriller "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination" (Viking, $24.95) describes her, Jane Bond.
It's tons of fun, full of Fielding's brilliant comic writing. It's the perfect book for the summer's first chick-lit pool read.
We caught up with the British author days before she begins her "Olivia" booksigning tour right here in Albuquerque.
Journal: So why a spy novel?
Helen Fielding: In the '90s there was no global crisis and it was a time when people were quite inward looking. You could worry about the circumference of your thighs all the time. Everything's changed now. There's something about a global crisis that makes you start to look outward more.
J: But a spy novel?
HF: If you think about it, the last time there was a flowering of spy fiction and spy heroes was in the Cold War. We've got a new enemy now, and we're already finding there's more fictional spy heroes now, like "Alias." I think that there is something comforting about the idea that one human being, using their qualities, could take on the enemy and win like James Bond. It's a comforting thought.
J: So it was the state of the world that sent you off into Ian Fleming territory?
HF: Yeah, and just the feeling you suddenly look at all these things happening on the teletube and you think "If I was in that situation, would I be able to deal with it? What would I do?" That's where it came from.
J: How are Bridget and Olivia different?
HF: They've got a lot in common. I think Bridget was a part of me that I didn't like to admit to. Olivia's the kind of woman I'd like to be, but I haven't quite managed it yet. She doesn't get everything right, but she's thinking and she uses her instincts. (Olivia's) against violence and killing, but she's got other things she can do which are more fanciful and effective. At one point she says that she actually thinks a hair dryer is a more effective weapon than a nerve agent dispenser, and she's actually right in that situation.
(That situation: Olivia is off to seduce a suspected Arab terrorist so that British and American intelligence officers can apprehend him. The spook boss wants her to leave her hair dryer behind to make room in her bag for more spy gadgets. Olivia argues that she can't seduce anyone if her hair is an air-dried fright.)
J: Every woman knows that's true.
HF: Exactly.
J: The book is a farcical romp, but it's also full of sharp character details about Olivia.
HF: I really love the Ian Fleming Bond novels, and their mix of fantasy and glamour and travel and all those things. But he makes sure the characters at the center are pretty believable. Olivia was quite real for me, in my imagination. I think I'll write another novel with her and she'll grow. I was really trying to give a sense of who she is.
J: And who is she?
HF: Like Bridget, she's in her way quite serious about living. She's not careless about how she lives, even though it might seem that way. That's why she keeps her Rules for Living. (A sampling: "No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you" and "Only buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance.")
J: How old is Olivia supposed to be?
HF: You know I never fixed it. She could be any age, really. I want people to be able to relate to her, whatever age they think she is. It depends what age you think you are that day. You know, I have days when I think that I'm 100. And there are those when I think I'm 22, and I'm quite surprised that I'm not.
J: Have you sold the film rights to "Olivia" yet?
HF: No, I prefer to publish it first and then we'll see what happens.
J: You wrote the screenplay for the 2001 film adaptation of "Bridget Jones's Diary." How does writing for the big screen compare with writing a book?
HF: It was kind of fun writing the novel so that you can do what you wanted. You can set it in Miami and L.A. and Honduras. You can rustle up a huge ship without someone telling you to make it a house or a car and set it in East London, you know, to save money on the budget. It's very liberating to do whatever you want and go wherever you want.
J: How long did it take you to write "Olivia"?
HF: About a year. I had already done the work on it, so it came really quickly.
J: You said you were trying to write serious novels when the ideas for both Bridget and Olivia came to you. What's a gifted comic writer like you doing writing serious novels?
HF: I'm quite serious about learning how to be a good novelist. One of the most important thing a novelist does is making the reader want to know what happens next. A thriller is the purest form of that, so I really wanted to teach myself how to do that so that I wouldn't have to steal any more plots from Jane Austen.
J: How did you teach yourself?
HF: I bought quite a few self-help books which told me how to construct a plot. I often write in coffee bars, and one of my friends came in and I was asleep surrounded by all these books called things like "You CAN Write A Mystery," "Plots and Plotting." But they helped. It's a mechanical thing. You plant clues, you give away elements of the story bit by bit.
J: It's hard to imagine Helen Fielding, author of "Bridget Jones's Diary," reading books on how to write books.
HF: One of the great things about a being a novelist is that in theory you get better at it as you get older because you know more about life. So I hope that when I am actually 90, as opposed to just feeling like it, I'll be able to write novels that marry everything, so that they are page-turners and they're funny but they're also quite profound.
Helen Fielding booksigning
WHEN: 6 p.m. Monday, June 7
WHERE: KiMo Theatre, 423 W. Central, Albuquerque
HOW MUCH: $26.40 for admission with a copy of Fielding's "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination"; $5 for admission with no book. Albuquerque theater group Tricklock Company will give readings of the book.
Tickets available at:
venue 
...go to bookmarks
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