ABSTRACT
Mammatheresa, in turn, became a major national best-seller. Indeed, never before has a Hungarian first-novel writer achieved similar success: the book sold some 130,000 copies in a market where selling 3,000 copies is considered significant. It is estimated that at least 400,000 people have read it, four percent of Hungary's population.3 The author became famous overnight. In an interview she says that whereas when she started to write the book she had nothing, now she has a publisher, a manager, a producer, a lawyer, and a psychologist who helps her to work through all the experiences she has encountered ("Terezanyu megpihenne"). The enormous success of the novel is also indicated by the fact that in hardly more than two years' time, as in the case of Bridget ]ones, Mammatheresa's film adaptation was released (December 16, 2004), and soon ranked as movie number three on the Budapest Top l 0 list ( Cinematrix). 4
First, let us consider the obvious similarities between the British novel and its Hungarian successor. What the critic Imelda Whelehan claims of Bridget ]ones is fully applicable to Mammatheresa:
Bridget Jones and Hungarian Chick Lit • 175
This is the kind of recognition factor (that is, the effect on readers: "That's me, that's about my life") that has made identification with both protagonists possible, particularly among urban, middle-class, mostly university or college-educated (typically in the humanities) young women in their late twenties and early thirties. In this respect, both texts have a direct reference to reality, confirmed by the fact that in many cases writer and protagonist are blurred in the minds of the readers. Such blurring is partly due to the first-person diarylike format-and quite justifiably, as both authors admit the clear autobiographical relevance. Fielding, for example, has often pointed out that Bridget's friends are modeled on her own. Zsuzsa Racz tells the story that she and her friends pondered (and were later to have a say in deciding) who would play their "own" characters in the film, and tells of her dates' fears that she would actually "write" about them sometime ("Terezanyu megpihenne").
