Helen Fielding returns with 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'

“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” by Helen Fielding

Mark Darcy died a hero’s death. And Bridget Jones sleeps alone again in “Mad About the Boy,” the first BJ book from author Helen Fielding in 14 years.

More shockers: She’s 51 and the mother of two small children. And fat.

In short, Bridget Jones is a middle-aged, dumpy single mother with no sex life.

It makes you want to ask, where is Fielding going with this?

Not to worry. She’s seen us through two novels “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” which together have sold more than 15 million copies and been made into two movies starring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.

First, let’s put Mark to rest.

The story told in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” begins several years after Darcy'’s death in 2008, when the jeep he was traveling in hit a land mine in the Darfur region of Sudan. Identified in the obit as a “leading international figure in victim representation,” the lawyer was in Sudan to secure the release of two British workers held hostage by the rebel regime.

Their children, William and daughter Mabel, were 2 and 3-months-old at the time.

Four years later, Bridget is trying to start life again but just can’t.

“Dear Mark,” she writes him, “I miss you so much. I love you so much ....

“But the thing is, Mark, I just can’t manage on my own. I really, really can’t.”

True that.

Her weight has ballooned to 175, and wine has once again become her chief nutritional supplement. And while she relentlessly chews Nicorette gum in lieu of smoking, Bridget still begins each diary entry with a running tally of defeat, as in:

“Thursday 19 April 2012: 175 lbs., alcohol units 4 (nice), calories 2822, possibility of having or desire to have sex ever again 0.”

Her friends, Talitha, Jude and Tom — Shazza is off making a fortune in Silicon Valley — are determined that things must change.

“Grieving apart, Bridget has lost, or shall we say, mislaid her sense of sexual self. And it’s our duty to help her relocate it,” pronounces Talitha, still hi-def glamorous at 60.

Jude judges Facebook too advanced, or rather too rife with the potential for humiliating herself, for Bridget. But she does sign on Twitter @JonesyBJ, then waits weeks for followers to come. In the meantime, Bridget seeks help at an obesity clinic. After a rocky start, where on a typical day she consumes 28 chocolate protein bars and 37 chocolate protein puddings on top of regular meals, she loses weight.