Book Review: Adrian Mole the Lost Years

Book Review: Adrian Mole, the Lost Years

Author: Sue Townsend

Date: 1984-1994

Publisher: Soho Press

ISBN: 1-56947-015-4

Length: 309 Pages

Quote: “No letter from Sarah Ferguson today.”

“Not lost enough,” says a caricature of Margaret Thatcher on the cover of this book. I beg to differ. This book contains a short reprint from True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, most of Adrian Mole from Minor to Major, and all of Adrian Mole, the Wilderness Years. 

Adrian Mole is the definitive nerd-as-opposed-to-geek. Theoretically intelligent enough for all sorts of opportunities, he tends to defeat himself, in real life, by his overwhelming real-world stupidity. He’s the sort of guy who’s invited to do a radio talk, where his lack of money and fashion sense won’t be held against him, and promptly tells the folks in radio-land that he’s wearing a shirt from a rummage sale, over a T-shirt with a message that embarrasses him, and “executive striped trousers” and “designer training shoes.” He’s the sort who reads a passage on clichés in The Complete Plain Words and notes that his writing style needs to improve “by leaps and bounds.”

In The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Pandora Braithwaite was his academic rival. In The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, she was his first girlfriend. Though not quite as perfect as Adrian has always thought her, she’s destined to go further than he, in life, and will be elected to Parliament while Adrian is still relying on his mother to finish his first book manuscript . (For a recipe book, Adrian’s first deliberately published work will show a remarkable degree of feminist consciousness.)

Meanwhile, Adrian’s diary should appeal to anyone who enjoys the blog genre. He dutifully reacts to the news items of each year of his fictional life. His reactions vary from standard-TV-viewer to unique. He forms a crush on Sarah Ferguson, without losing his feeling for Pandora, and sends her a poem pleading, “Don’t marry Andy...Come to Leicester, come to Leicester, marry me!” He dutifully visits Bert, the senior citizen he met when he and the other thirteen-year-olds had to do community service projects (for school, not as a punishment). There’s a chortle on every page, and the laugh is usually on Adrian, but none of his friends or neighbors is beyond ridicule.

If you use out-loud laughter as a painkiller and mood elevator, keep a copy of at least one Adrian Mole book handy at all times.