Product Description

Adrian Mole’s pen is scribbling for the twenty-first century. 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 escape the clutches of Marigold and win over her voluptuous sister Daisy… Adrian still yearns for a better, more meaningful world. And he’s not ready to surrender his pen yet…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5907 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

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 133/4 (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. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Sue Townsend is on of Britain’s bestselling authors. Her hugely successful novels include five Adrian Mole books, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 553/4) and Number Ten. She is also well known as a playwright. She lives in Leicester.

Customer Reviews

Adequate But a Tired Novel
I am an avid fan of the adventures of Mole and especially loved the the great "Capuccino Years" but this is a bit dissapointing:- Mole is at his most feeble and the constant crammng in of contemporary themes such as Iraq, MRSA, credit culture and environmentalism seems more than a little forced.

Mole desite his lower-middle class small-mindedness has often evoked affection from readers rather than disgust but Adrian has gone from a pretentious adolescent to now a selfish middle-aged serial monogamist. I lost sympathy with the midlander half-way through the novel. Now he is a hybrid of David Brent and Alan Partridge.
In that regard the main character, and the book as a a whole, is a victim of Townsend's friendly fire.

The best Adrian Mole
This is one of the few books (along with the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that made me laugh out loud all the while I was reading it. I have read all the Adrian Moles but this one is the best.

the early twenty-first century viewed by one Mr Mole
The eponymous diarist over some decades is here writing as a man in his mid-thirties, a failed family man who increasingly lives beyond his means. H is opinionated and naive but catches the zeitgeist of early 21st century Britain. Easy to read because beautifully written. It may never be considered a major work, but offers a compassionate, affectionate but nonetheless highly critical look at today's England.