Beyond Bridget Jones

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Aside from the suburban teenager as represented by James Van Der Beek, is there a subject of greater cultural fascination at the moment than the young, single career woman yearning to a Joni Mitchell ballad in her mind? She has certainly claimed her place on television, and soon Barnes and Noble will need to create extra room for her, perhaps with a books-about-thirtyish-media- women-who-fret-and-drink-Scotch-in-New-York-or-California section. In the year since Helen Fielding's best-selling Bridget Jones's Diary, a novel focused on a cocktails-and-cellulite-obsessed London editor, writers have continued to weigh in on how single women do, and should, comport themselves.

Earlier this year came Melissa Roth's On the Loose, a sort of slapdash anthropology of real-life dating women on both coasts. The book was meant to show that not every woman is marriage hungry, that singledom can amount to a grand old time in its own right. Recent months have also brought three books by conservative social critics, notably Wendy Shalit, arguing that no, professional pursuit and sexual gallivanting aren't good for women at all. In fact, such endeavors leave women flummoxed, dissatisfied and dead--if not in a literal Looking for Mr. Goodbar sense, then at least in a metaphoric one.

In the coming weeks three new novels examining the experience of single womanhood are due, and none will provide much defense against allegations that life as a contemporary 29-to-36-year-old female can lead to occasional confusion or heartache. All these debuts--Kate Christensen's In the Drink (Doubleday; 278 pages; $22.95), Suzanne Finnamore's Otherwise Engaged (Knopf; 209 pages; $22) and Melissa Bank's keen The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Viking; 274 pages; $23.95)--feature heroines who might enjoy Bridget's company but eventually tire of her ninny-ness.

Like Bridget, Christensen's Claudia Steiner is a mess, the kind who bumps along falling into bed with losers and who drinks water "only in the form of melted ice in my drinks." A ghostwriter for a Jackie Collins-ish author, Claudia is trying to exit her protracted adolescence and win the love of her best friend, a lawyer, William, who might want to keep things platonic. Not much happens in this novel (and some of what does happens a bit too randomly), but Claudia is endearing because she remains appreciative of her own grittiness. She avoids coming off as Bridget can: like an unfunny stand-up comic bemoaning the fact that she doesn't look like Elizabeth Hurley.

True feminist points, though, might go to Otherwise Engaged, which, while no paragon of craftsmanship, takes on the subject of female commitment fear, not a topic feverishly discussed in McCall's. The novel deconstructs a year in the life of Eve, a successful ad executive, as she prepares to marry at 36. She has dated her beau for four years. All along she has thought happiness would come in a ring box, but once Eve gets her gem, all she can do is panic over the foreverness of it all--aren't all married people miserable? It is comforting to read a book that looks at the real doubts women have when marriage comes after the breeziness of youth has subsided.

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, the truly poignant novel in the lot, never brings its witty protagonist, Jane, to the altar, but it traces her love life episodically from the time she is 14 through her 20s and 30s as she orbits Manhattan's publishing world. There is an exquisite honesty to Jane's relationships; she suffers plenty, but her stories serve as a testament to the value of not living one's life with emotional thriftiness. The final scene in the book has Jane purposely withholding interest in a man she likes because the authors of The Rules are communicating with her telepathically and admonishing her to remain aloof. The approach, of course, quickly backfires.

Defenders of Bridget Jones brook no complaints about its portrayal of the single condition because the book is, after all, a comedy. But there was something unsettling--something that drained the satire--in Bridget's pursuit of a boyfriend. It was as though she wanted one not because falling in love is a signature experience of humanity but because she saw a man as a necessary accoutrement of urbane life, like a Prada bag. Her Stateside compatriots aren't nearly as absurd--or maybe they just have better shrinks.