Product Description

An accidental celebrity, with a spreading bald patch, despairing of family values, Mole is still worrying: Is Viagra cheating? Why won't the BBC produce "The White Van", his serial killer comedy? Mole, aged 30 1/4, chronicles the closing years of the 20th century with slanderous abandon.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #715670 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-14
• Released on: 1999-10-04
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Amazon.co.uk Review
Adrian Mole is balding, he's bitter and he's back, this time aged 30¼. Working at the Hoi Polloy restaurant, Soho, where a typical menu includes:

Heinz Tomato Soup,
(with white bread floaters)

Grey Lamb Chops
Boiled Cabbage avec Dan Quayle Potatoes
Dark Brown onion gravy

Spotted Dick à la Clinton
Bird's Eye Custard

Cheddar Cheese, Cream Crackers
Nescafé
After Eight Mint

he is spotted by a cable TV producer and ends up starring in a celebrity chef show celebrating offal. Though he may be older he is certainly no wiser, still passing his time by dreaming of Pandora (now a shining star in Tony Blair's New Government) after his marriage to a Nigerian beauty ends in tatters. But underneath the layers of experience and sophistication, fans of the Mole family will find the same dysfunctional mess that made Adrian's Secret Diary an instant bestseller--his young son is being brought up by his mother in Ashby-de-la- Zouch, his 16-year-old sister leaves home to live with her multiply pierced boyfriend and his father is bed- bound with manic depression. Adrian still makes constant lists of juvenile neuroses and concentrates on his penis activity to an unhealthy extent (it is when it reaches 0/10 he realises something has to be done).

Townsend's trademark acerbic wit is still much in evidence;

Zippo kissed my mother's hand and complimented her on the shirt she was wearing. 'Is it Vivienne Westwood?' he murmered.
'No', she muttered back. 'It's BhS'.
'You clever thing', he crooned.

it is only the frames of reference that have changed. Occasionally verging on the corny ("I arrived at the Brent Cross shopping centre car-park, to find that my car had been towed away five days ago and was in a police compound somewhere in Purley. A £25 cab ride took me to the Purley gates …") true Mole fanatics will forgive Townsend her occasional excesses for the numerous laugh-out-loud moments that punctuate Adrian's existence as he blunders on towards middle age.

Accessible, amusing and appealing, The Cappuccino Years see an Adrian who has survived the Growing Pains; thought better of True Confessions; is out of the Wilderness Years and is facing the only really important question that remains: Is Viagra cheating? --Lucie Naylor

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Customer Reviews

Adrian Mole - Modern History
I would agree that, at first, the style of this book deviates from Adrian's first diaries in that the entries are really long-winded (and less funny), but perhaps that's deliberate (and that Townsend is showing Adrian trying to be more of a "writer", which he is renownedly crap at). It also coincides with a time in Adrian's life when he seems to have more time to write lengthy nonsense. Later in the diary, when he's more busy with "real life" tasks, his entries become shorter and more personally reflective (and therefore, more funny).

What I think is brilliant about these books is remembering the era I grew up in. Adrian, as always, chronicles current events in his diary: such as Princess Diana's death and the new Blair government coming to power, and makes statements about these events, thus recording history in a way that portrays, more than most, how the "ordinary person" viewed those times. It then becomes more like a discourse of modern history - which I think is great. It's like having a (modern) 'memories museum' in book format. Fantastic!

The Sunday Telegraph says it best - Townsend 'has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it'.

Is it me?
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with any of the previous reviews. I tried hard to get into this book, as I loved the original Adrian Mole's Diary (Aged 13 3/4), but I just didn't find it funny! The only bit that I giggled at, was the thought of the 'New Dog' perched on top of the cushion that was too big for it's basket! I'm beginning to wonder if it's just my sense of humour that's failing. If that's the case, I apologise again.

Adrian Mole is a national treasure
Someone should slap an English Heritage plaque on the cover of The Cappuccino Years. Because not only is this one of the funniest, most bittersweet books I have read for ages, and a more than worthy successor to the other Mole books, Sue Townsend has written about Britain in the late 90s more accurately than any other recent writer I can remember. It takes a brilliantly satirical look at Blair's Britain, the spin doctors, the Cool Britannia tag, the over-priced restaurants, the decline of the nuclear family, and so on. She has said that the new Labour government is like a cappuccino - all froth and very little substance. Well, this book is all substance, but with loads of froth to make you genuinely laugh out loud. Her comic timing and sense of wit is as great as ever. This isn't just a comic masterpiece, it's quite simply a stunningly good look at what life is like in our country today. Adrian ends the book with two sons, no home and no job, and I can't wait to see where he's at when he's forty. More please!