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Summary
Summary
Now in his thirties, Adrian's still worrying- Can he be a good father? Is Viagra cheating? Why won't the BBC produce 'The White Van', his serial killer comedy?
Will he find the fulfilment he seeks as celebrity offal chef, single parent and celibate novelist? Is there a place for Adrian Mole in Blair's Brave New Britain?
Author Notes
Sue Townsend was born in Leicester, England on April 2, 1946. She left school at fifteen and worked a series of jobs before becoming a full-time author. She was best known for her books about the neurotic diarist Adrian Mole including The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. Her other works include The Queen and I, Number Ten, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman Aged 55¾, and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year. She died after a stroke on April 10, 2014 at the age of 68.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Townsend's hilarious, uniquely British creation, Adrian Mole, first appeared on the literary scene as a spotty teenager in 1982 with the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13U. Mole has become a lovable, frustrated intellectual whose misguided introspectiveness and rash impulsiveness keep him on a cycle of failure and rebound. In this amusing sixth book in the series, Adrian, now 30, is divorced and the father of two sons (William, almost three years old, and Glenn, 12). His good friends are still around: old flame Pandora "we adore ya" Braithwaite has been elected a Labour MP by capitalizing on her short, tight skirts to win votes; best friend Nigel is trying to figure out how to tell his family he's gay. To Adrian's horror, his parents swap partners with Pandora's parents--and his dad discovers Viagra. Despite his ineptitude at cooking, Adrian works as the head chef at a snooty restaurant called Hoi Polloi, which specializes in "execrable nursery food." It is typical of Townsend's humor that characters are feted for what they are not (Adrian--temporarily--gets his own cooking show, "Offally Good!") and unacknowledged for what they are (no one recognizes Adrian's responsible honesty as a father). Throughout, Townsend's lively prose sparkles, giving life to the myriad trivial events of Adrian's day. Adrian makes the inevitable comparison to Bridget Jones: "The woman is obsessed with herself!... She writes as though she were the only person in the world to have problems." Mole composes a brief letter to Jones, asking if she has any advice for getting his diaries published. It's a good thing for readers that Townsend figured out how to do that a long time ago. (Aug.) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Townsend's hilarious, uniquely British creation, Adrian Mole, first appeared on the literary scene as a spotty teenager in 1982 with the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13\. Mole has become a lovable, frustrated intellectual whose misguided introspectiveness and rash impulsiveness keep him on a cycle of failure and rebound. In this amusing sixth book in the series, Adrian, now 30, is divorced and the father of two sons (William, almost three years old, and Glenn, 12). His good friends are still around: old flame Pandora "we adore ya" Braithwaite has been elected a Labour MP by capitalizing on her short, tight skirts to win votes; best friend Nigel is trying to figure out how to tell his family he's gay. To Adrian's horror, his parents swap partners with Pandora's parentsDand his dad discovers Viagra. Despite his ineptitude at cooking, Adrian works as the head chef at a snooty restaurant called Hoi Polloi, which specializes in "execrable nursery food." It is typical of Townsend's humor that characters are feted for what they are not (AdrianDtemporarilyDgets his own cooking show, "Offally Good!") and unacknowledged for what they are (no one recognizes Adrian's responsible honesty as a father). Throughout, Townsend's lively prose sparkles, giving life to the myriad trivial events of Adrian's day. Adrian makes the inevitable comparison to Bridget Jones: "The woman is obsessed with herself!... She writes as though she were the only person in the world to have problems." Mole composes a brief letter to Jones, asking if she has any advice for getting his diaries published. It's a good thing for readers that Townsend figured out how to do that a long time ago. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Guardian Review
The many readers who grew up with Adrian Mole and consider him a contemporary will be shocked by the latest turn of events in his long-running diaries. "No, it won't be my prostate," he assures the doctor, after ever-more-frequent dashes to the lavatory finally force him to get medical advice. "I'm only thirty-nine and a half." But Adrian has never been lucky - luck's not funny - and in The Prostrate Years he details his experience of the only cancer that makes people snigger. News of his "trouble down there" soon spreads round the village, and everyone has a helpful story. The irritating couple who run the post office weigh in: "We've known half a dozen people suffering from your kind of trouble, haven't we Wendy?" "Yes, and two of them are alive and well today, aren't they, Tony?" Fictional diarists spin much of their comedy out of routine - think of Bridget Jones's daily fags'n'booze tally - and the unwitting exaggeration of tiny concerns. Yet Adrian now has something really worth worrying about, while routines take on a darker hue: the list of days with no entry but "Chemo" signals both the unrelenting slog of treatment and Adrian's lack of energy for his customary anxieties. This isn't black comedy - Sue Townsend cares too much about her characters for that - but it's certainly grim. Yet what is so admirable about this book - and makes it such a piercing, funny read - is the strength of humour that Townsend maintains, expertly avoiding both mawkishness and hollow jollity as she steers Adrian through the strange new world of the oncology department. He panics at being asked how he'd like his tumour to be treated ("I'm not qualified. I only got a C grade in GCSE biology"); is rather pleased with his self-administered Brazilian to "tidy up" the treatment site; and gamely tries on the NHS wigs for "persons of colour" ("I might as well, while I'm here"). Adrian isn't the only one falling apart. His father, after years during which his only exercise was "wagging his index finger on the remote control", is in a wheelchair following a stroke; Mr Carlton-Hayes, revered owner of the bookshop where Adrian works, becomes increasingly frail. Adrian's overachieving brother Brett is brought to the brink of madness and, worse, back to the wretched provinces by the credit crunch. "Bookseller from hell" Bernard Hopkins, whose name triggers an alarm if he applies for a job at Waterstone's, also returns and throws himself on Adrian's mercy; sozzled and near-destitute, he brings fresh anecdotes about his latest suicide attempt and a passion for first editions (Adrian has a weakness for shabby-genteel old men to rival Beckett's). Even blind Nigel's housework dog is not safe, its death only discovered after Nigel has got increasingly angry with its failure to answer the door. Worst of all, though, is wife Daisy's dalliance with the local lord of the manor ("I don't see why women go barmy about Fairfax-Lycett. He is far too tall, looks like a ravaged Hugh Grant and is vulgarly ostentatious with his sports cars and Savile Row tweeds"). After long-distance dreams of Pandora and tragic local girlfriends it was a real, grown-up kind of happiness that Townsend bestowed on Adrian with Daisy and their gloriously stubborn little girl Gracie, and now it's under threat. So it's from an ever-more-vulnerable, insular position that Adrian charts the wider events of 2007/8: the accession of Gordon Brown ("a secret Socialist who will go into Number Ten much as Clark Kent went into a phone box"); the smoking ban; the rise of Jeremy Kyle (on whose TV show his parents discover Adrian's half-sister's paternity); the continuing war in Afghanistan. One strange note in the diaries is Adrian's failure to write to his son, Glenn, who is fighting there; perhaps a comic challenge too far. Meanwhile, he struggles on with his own creative project: a medieval community play entitled Plague! with a cast of 60 and stage directions such as "A carrion crow enters stage right and circles overhead". These are not new jokes, but Townsend continues to spin them brilliantly, and with a vitality and verve particularly impressive in a book about endings, about things closing down (Britain's in the death throes of the New Labour project, while in Adrian's village the bookshop, the pub, the post office, the church - all are going). Believe it or not, she's been writing about ridiculous nativity plays and dreadful Christmas dinners for a quarter of a century now, but the latest incarnations are as fresh as ever. In this book the comedy is all the sharper, and more poignant, for its melancholy contrasts, the emotional danger and the sense that time is always running out. Hitesh, Adrian's colleague at the bookshop, complains as people do every year that Christmas isn't like it used to be. Bernard pats his arm and sagely replies, "Hitesh, old flower, Christmas is exactly the same, it's you who have changed." To order Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years for pounds 17.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop Caption: article-adrianmole.1 This isn't black comedy - Sue Townsend cares too much about her characters for that - but it's certainly grim. Yet what is so admirable about this book - and makes it such a piercing, funny read - is the strength of humour that Townsend maintains, expertly avoiding both mawkishness and hollow jollity as she steers [Adrian Mole] through the strange new world of the oncology department. He panics at being asked how he'd like his tumour to be treated ("I'm not qualified. I only got a C grade in GCSE biology"); is rather pleased with his self-administered Brazilian to "tidy up" the treatment site; and gamely tries on the NHS wigs for "persons of colour" ("I might as well, while I'm here"). Adrian isn't the only one falling apart. His father, after years during which his only exercise was "wagging his index finger on the remote control", is in a wheelchair following a stroke; Mr Carlton-Hayes, revered owner of the bookshop where Adrian works, becomes increasingly frail. Adrian's overachieving brother Brett is brought to the brink of madness and, worse, back to the wretched provinces by the credit crunch. "Bookseller from hell" Bernard Hopkins, whose name triggers an alarm if he applies for a job at Waterstone's, also returns and throws himself on Adrian's mercy; sozzled and near-destitute, he brings fresh anecdotes about his latest suicide attempt and a passion for first editions (Adrian has a weakness for shabby-genteel old men to rival Beckett's). - Justine Jordan.
Kirkus Review
More satirical diaries of a persistently pathetic English everyman pitches brickbats and sourballs at Tony Blair, Princess Di worshippers, TV cooking shows, celibacy, and the ever increasing bunch of village idiots and ne'er-do-wells in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Back in 1982, long before Bridget Jones turned feckless romance and menstrual cramps into bestselling silliness, playwright and comic novelist Townsend introduced The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged, 13 3/4. Over the years, the precocious adolescent who wrote bad poetry and made hilariously misinformed comments about his dysfunctional family, has grown--though not necessarily up. This sixth installment covers Adrian's misadventures, with sarcastic side glances at national events, from March 1997 to May 1998, and opens with 31-year-old Adrian, author of an unpublished novel, employed as a chef at the Hoi Polloi, a fashionable Soho restaurant that serves such ineptly prepared "traditional" English fare as overcooked frozen liver and runny Yorkshire pudding (from the kitchen, Adrian glimpses Bridget Jones grimacing over dinner). His Nigerian wife Jo Jo has fled back to Africa while their three-year-old offspring, William, stays with Adrian's father, George, who is chronically depressed because he can't get it up anymore, and mother, Pauline, who is having an affair with Ivan Braithwaite, the father of Adrian's first girlfriend, the voluptuous Dr. Pandora Braithwaite, who is also Adrian's first and, so far, unrequited love. The diaries open with Adrian's cautious surprise at Tony Blair's election, for who should ride in on Blair's coattails as the new MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch? Adrian contemplates celibacy, makes a short-lived TV cooking show called Offally Good!, Princess Di is killed in a car crash, Adrian's father has an affair with Ivan Braithwaite's wife, the Hoi Polloi is closed when foot fungus is found in a sink and, incredibly, Pandora and Adrian wind up in bed. Some of Townsend's veddy British jokes don't cross the Atlantic, but those that do are funny, frivolous, and devastatingly dead-on. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Townsend continues the crisply hilarious saga of Britain's favorite fictional diarist, Adrian Mole. First introduced as a boy in The Adrian Mole Diaries (1986) and revisited during his highly opinionated and wildly hopeful adolescence in Adrian Mole: The Lost Years (1994), Townsend's diary-keeping hero is now 30 years old and still spectacularly and endearingly inept. His latest journal begins in 1997 after his gorgeous and accomplished Nigerian wife has left him and their 2-year-old son, William, who eats nothing but Coco Puffs and spends most of his time with Adrian's flinty mother, while Adrian's perennially depressed father stays in bed, and Adrian's teenage sister fumes and curses. Adrian camps out above the retro-trendy restaurant Hoi Polloi, where he is head chef even though he can't cook, an irrelevancy given their cuisine: the very worst of English fare with an emphasis on offal. Adrian, who dreams of making it big as a television writer, gets a break when he is invited to host a cable show titled Offally Good! and to write a companion cookbook, but chronically hapless and naive, he flubs both opportunities. Meanwhile, his first love, the sexy and unavailable Pandora Braithwaite, wins a seat in the House of Commons, and their parents, much to their children's horror, enact the "Great Mole/Braithwaite Partner Swap." From losing his job to finding an incipient bald spot to discovering that he has another son, Adrian is a comic Job in a world gone mad with irony and greed. But his confused heart brims with love and good intentions, and Townsend skewers end-of-the millennium Britain with acumen and glee. --Donna Seaman
Library Journal Review
On the eve of Tony Blair's election, Adrian Mole discovers that he is losing his hair. And so begins the latest installment in the "Adrian Mole" saga, which began with the popular and entertaining The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 133/4, published here in 1984. Now in his "cappucino years," Adrian is a single father and chef who struggles financially. His personal life continues to be complicated by his dysfunctional family, his still unrequited love for Pandora Braithwaite, and the revelation that he is father to not one but two sons. Pandora compares Adrian's life to a "situation comedy," and Townsend tries to ring humor from Adrian's failure in his various roles, which include husband, son, and writer. It is not until the end of the book that he finds some redemption in his role as father. And therein lies the greatest single flaw in this bookDthe teenage angst that was so funny in the younger Adrian wears thin in a man in his 30s who whines about his struggles to define himself as an adult. This is sure to be requested by loyal Mole fans, but its appeal to new readers will be limited.DCaroline M. Hallsworth, Sudbury P.L., Ontario (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.