Adrian Mole Grows Up

Advantages: Satirical look at modern life
Disadvantages: Adrian Mole doesnt work as an adult character

...Adrian Mole starts the new millennium at a low point in his life; his previous career as an offal chef and TV presenter has come to an end, he has developed a bald spot the size of a jaffa cake and he is forced to live amongst the underclass on the Gaitskell estate. Adrian is now a single father to his two boys Glenn and William and parenthood brings new challenges for him. William wants a Barbie hairdressing salon for Christmas and Glenn forges notes from home to the PE teacher asking that he be allowed to wear long trousers for cross country running to spare him the humiliation of having his skinny legs on show. Modern parenthood can be a minefield, especially when your children have two different mothers and you are forced to bring them up on a tough estate with bad influences all around them. All the old characters from...

wigglylittleworm 03.12.2008 · Read review
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Review of The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001 - Sue Townsend

If you love one of life's triers, go and find Adrian Mole

Advantages: Would suit teenagers and adults alike
Disadvantages: Today's teenagers might have to look up the 1980s references

...worries that any teenager might have. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole is about the same age as me - published in 1984, the short novel follows on from Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4, and covers his life between April 1982 and June 1983, ending just before he takes his O Levels. Although written in diary format, Sue Townsend has got the knack of creating believable "diary entries" that vary between a few lines and a few pages in length, yet always manage to further the story. It's quite hard to narrow down what age group this would appeal to - it might appear to be a book for teenagers, but it's one of those stories you can read at thirteen and still enjoy at twenty-three. Setting and Background Adrian lives with his mother and father somewhere around Leicester (geographical places are rarely mentioned but I have...

KateHurst 02.06.2009 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole: The Growing Pains - Sue Townsend

Adrian Mole Returns

Advantages: Funny, witty, comical
Disadvantages: Adrian and Pandora are still not a couple!

...Well, it's great to see dear old Adrian Mole back after so many years. But this time he is a grown man in his 30's, not a meer spotty lad of 13 yrs old! Sue Townsend has, yet again, written a book that is so witty, funny and comical, I was laughing the whole way through! He is an offal chef at the 'Hoi Polloi' restaurant in Soho, London. A job he endures only to earn a living. His real dream is to be a writer, something he has had little success of. Another one of his failures is Pandara Braithwaite, the beautiful school sweetheart who is up for election as the MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch. He loves her dearly, and would be a dream come true for him if she could love him in return. Now a single father to William, half Nigerian. Jo-Jo, William's mother, is now in Nigeria. William loves the Tellytubbies and Jeremy Clarkson...

Louise90 04.02.2001 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years - Sue Townsend

Adrian Mole Growing Pains!

Advantages: very hard to put down!
Disadvantages: none

...Adrian Mole is a series of books by Sue Townsend. It started of with The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 and the next was "The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole. Adrian Mole is 15 in this book, He says he's an intellectual even though he's a bit dim, one of his main problems is all the spots he's got. He is in a lower class than his girlfriend, Pandora, who has a massive home, loads of money, and smokes, Unlike him. The story is his diary of what happens every day through his eyes. At the beginning, the falklands war is happening and he tries to keep his map up to date. In the first book, his mum and dad break up, and his dad goes to live with 'Stick insect' Doreen Slater and her son Maxwell. His mum starts to see the next door neighbour Lucas but his mum and dad get back together. Then They find out Doreen is pregnant...

uk_girl_nikki 16.08.2005 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole: The Growing Pains - Sue Townsend

Who Doesn't Love Adrian Mole

Advantages: Excellent as always, and a must-read book.
Disadvantages: Honestly can't think of any.

...Adrian Mole - a man who holds a very special place in the hearts of all that encounter him. The eternal idiot, all his admirers are grateful that he is so dense that he doesn't realise the fool he so frequently makes of himself. After his divorce from Jo, the wonderful (and clearly totally out of Adrian's league) woman that he fell for in 'The Wilderness Years', Adrian has no one to long for but his old love Pandora, who we grew to love/hate during Adrian's adolescence. It becomes clear, in fact, that Adrian has never got over Pandora, though all her tawdry affairs with gay intellectuals, and drunkards. He still imagines himself to be the perfect man for this impossibly brainy and beautiful woman, who is the shining light of Blair's new, triumphant Labour. This latest addition to the Mole Chronicles is another...

Fuschia 20.03.2001 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years - Sue Townsend

Adrian Mole 18 years on

Advantages: Strong cast
Disadvantages: Hard act to follow

...I tuned in to the new Adrian Mole comedy on BBC1 last night. I had enjoyed Sue Townsend's original Secret Diary when he was 13 and a bit and was interested to see how things had moved on. I was also attracted by the impressive cast, which included Alison Steadman, Zoe Wanamaker, Keith Allen and one of my favourites Helen Baxendale as Pandora. This time the story is set on the eve of the General Election in 1997 and Pandora is standing as a New Labour candidate in Ashby de la Zouch and Adrian is a single parent working as an offal chef in London. Mole, played by Stephen Mangan is still besotted by Pandora. Although an enjoyable half an hour this new series didn't quite take off for me, it may improve as the series develops over the next few weeks....

Mikew79 09.02.2001 (03.02.2001) · Read review
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Review of BBC1 - Adrian Mole:the Cappuccino Years

Adrian Mole and the modern British society....

Advantages: Hilarious as always!
Disadvantages: Some may not like the Mole diaries of later years

...As hilarious as ever, this Adrian Mole book delighted me just as much as the previous ones. He discusses the weapons of mass destruction, swans which 'can break a man's arm, y'know!' and a marriage to a strange hippy girl who makes dolls houses, that he hates the sight of. Some may prefer the diaries of Mole when he was 13 3/4 etc, but this diary of him as an adult is equally humurous, and he continues to be delightfully naive about every situation he ever encounters! This book is longer than most, yet is extremely engaging, and you are likely to find yourself saying "I'll read just one more entry", until you find you've reached the end of the book! I always find myself disappointed when I've finished, and have read this book at least 4 times over since being given it last Christmas. There are some sad moments in this book, when...

ironic_anathema 02.05.2006 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction - Sue Townsend

This Mole keeps digging ...

Advantages: Witty, well-plotted, better than the last one ...
Disadvantages: Borderline polemic, not as good as the first two ...

...I was part-raised by Adrian Mole. I read the first of his diaries, “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 and ¾” when I was about 10 years old. At that time, there was much in the book I didn’t understand. I had no idea what an egg-timer shaped object called a “predictor” could be in his mother’s bathroom cupboard. I had no clue how to pronounce “eunuch” as in Germaine Greer’s famous novel (I vividly remember thinking it was pronounced ‘yunch’). As I grew older and a little more worldly wise, each re-reading of the first two in what is now a quintet of Mole books would reveal something I hadn’t seen before. They became possibly two of my favourite books of all time. When the fourth in the series, “The Capuccino Years” was released a few years ago, I read it with a profound sense of disappointment. I didn’t really find it funny...

Drooboy 10.01.2005 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction - Sue Townsend

painful moles

Advantages: great characters
Disadvantages: can all this happen to one man, bit like reading forrest gump

...If you read the 'Secret Diary of..' and 'The Growing Pains..' 10-12 years ago like I did, then you will enjoy this book as it is almost a where are they now kind of thing. If you haven't read the first two, it would still be funny but it is better to know about the characters and how Adrian Mole was as a teenager before picking up 'The Cappucino Years'. The book itself is fairly easy going, and it is as it suggests like reading someone's diary. Adrian himself has grown up in some ways but is still the naive schoolkid he was in the first two books. The book is set around the time of the last General Election. Since we left he has been married (to a Nigerian woman - who has since left him and their son and gone back to Nigeria) and moved to London as a chef in a trendy Offal restaurant. He is still fixated over Pandora who is now...

mookielidl 08.02.2001 · Read review
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Review of Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years - Sue Townsend

Adrian No-le

Advantages: It's Moley!
Disadvantages: Badly casted more than anything else

...Adrian Mole is a national phenomenon. The first series of books I ever read, I've always been a massive Moley - and Sue Townsend - fan. The original TV series, rereleased on video soon and starring Julie Walters and Beryl Reid, was superb, and Townsend's books need no introduction. The latest book, 'The Cappucino Years', is an excellent read, but somewhere it's been lost in translation. For one, Stephen Mangam just isn't Adrian Mole. Mole is supposed to be a Leicester born, quirky, geeky guy, whereas Mangam just looks himself dressed down for the part. Helen Baxendale's Pandora really doesn't deserve even a mention, so bad is she, and the rest of both families just fade into insignifigance. Only saving factors are Zoe Wanamaker, excellent as Pandora's suffering mother, and Mole's sister Rosie who is equally ever-suffering, and equally...

BennyRialto 24.02.2001 · Read review
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Review of BBC1 - Adrian Mole:the Cappuccino Years