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Summary
Summary
Wednesday April 2nd
My birthday.
I am thirty-five today. I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death.
Adrian Mole is middle-aged but still scribbling. Working as a bookseller and living in Leicester's Rat Wharf; finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair; locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud; measuring his expanding bald spot; and trying to win-over the voluptuous Daisy . . . Adrian yearns for a better more meaningful world. But he's not ready to surrender his pen yet . . .
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 (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This fifth installment of Adrian Mole's diary (The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4; Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, etc.) breaks new ground with its concern for current affairs and its sympathetic treatment of not-always-exemplary characters. Adrian, as usual, is struggling with various relationships and with constant financial problems, always trying to do the right thing, but usually giving in to his baser urges, in love and in spending. He becomes accidentally engaged to dollhouse-building homebody Marigold while spending flirtatious evenings with childhood love Pandora; fires off missives to the likes of Tony Blair and Tim Henman; and works, genuinely, to be a good father, friend and ex-husband to a cast of often bizarre but always human characters. Townsend, author of numerous non-Adrian novels, plays and nonfiction, makes Adrian's adult disorientation palpable as he tries to figure out how he went from hosting a popular television show to working in a failing second-hand bookshop, and copes with the shock of seeing childhood bullies make good and childhood dreams go awry. Arguments about the war figure prominently: one of Adrian's sons is sent to Iraq; his best friend, Robert, is there, too. Adrian's reactions to the war are complex, funny and wrenching. By the time the diary breaks off (on Sunday, July 22, 2004), things are looking up for Adrian and a bridesmaid-and he is considering (to her consternation) writing an autobiography. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Loveable loser Adrian Mole turns 35 in the latest installment in the British series. Townsend began tracking Adrian's wholly mediocre life in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13_ (1982). Set between 2002 and 2004, this, like the others, takes the form of diary entries. Here a slightly more responsible Adrian emerges. Despite a few setbacks--his cooking show, Offally Good!, has been cancelled, and youngest son William has gone to live with his mum in Nigeria--he's finally moved out of his parents' house. Adrian has bought a posh loft at Rat Wharf and some dangerously white furniture to go with it. He is doing well as an assistant to an antiquarian bookseller and may even have found a remedy for the unrequited love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, in the form of Miss Marigold Flowers. But happy times have short tenancy--in fact, just a few days. Adrian's initial attraction to Marigold's fragility disappears when he's nearly bored to death during a long tour of her doll houses. But no matter: Marigold tells everyone they're engaged and Adrian seems helpless to contradict her. Likewise, life at Rat Wharf turns out to be less than ideal when the picturesque canal swans begin menacing Adrian, and his upstairs neighbor complains at the noise made when Adrian boils water. Finally, Adrian's credit-card debt is mounting, thanks in part to his "resourcefulness" in taking cash advances on newly offered cards to pay the minimum on others. Things get worse: Marigold says she is pregnant and sets a wedding date, Adrian begins a torrid affair with her sister Daisy and his son Glenn is stationed in Iraq. With her usual dark wit, Townsend skewers the Blair government's search for WMDs, the pervasive hell of modern debt and the everyman's inability to master love. Laugh-out-loud one-liners ensure that even the uninitiated will enjoy Adrian Mole's journey through Townsend's cruel, comic world. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In the Adrian Mole diaries, Townsend has brought her hero from teenage angst to single parenthood, brief television stardom, and near bankruptcy. In the sixth installment, Adrian is 34 but still not connecting with life's realities. He has cancelled a holiday in Cyprus because of Tony Blair's warnings that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction could target the island in 45 minutes, but his travel agent won't refund his 57.10 deposit until evidence of the WMDs is put forward. So, Adrian writes a letter to Mr. Blair requesting such proof. He buys a ridiculous flat, complete with rats and marauding swans, with a down payment from his credit card. He gets involved with a disturbed young woman, whose family is only too happy to have him take her off their hands. And his parents have sold their home and bought a pigsty, literally, with a plan to renovate and live the country high life. Through it all, Townsend treats the serious issues seriously, but the rest is just pure fun. --Elizabeth Dickie Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In Townsend's latest installment of the Adrian Mole series, the feckless pseudointellectual has entered the early stages of middle age, but his judgment has hardly improved. Not only is he engaged to a misanthropic woman who designs doll houses, but he has also accumulated more debt than he could pay off in one lifetime; there's also a sadistic swan that terrorizes him whenever he ventures outside of his fashionable new condominium. As if this weren't enough, Adrian's painfully unsophisticated but good-hearted 17-year-old son, Glenn, has been deployed to Iraq. Adrian's angst over the situation increases with each piece of correspondence with his son, even though the elder man firmly supports Tony Blair's assertion that Saddam Hussein does indeed possess weapons of mass destruction. Townsend's acerbic wit has become even sharper; her brand of humor is more hilarious than nearly everything on television or in the movies today. While the barrage of British cultural references may distract many American readers, and the novel's ending feels a bit too dashed off and tidy, Townsend continues to entertain with her intelligent humor. Recommended for most fiction collections.-Kevin Greczek, Ewing, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.