276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

The scarce first title in the acclaimed series and included on the BBC News list of the '100 most influential novels'. Townsend also published a collection of Monthly columns in the “Sainsbury Magazine” titled “The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman” in 2001. The first two books appealed to many readers as a realistic and humorous treatment of the inner life of an adolescent boy, and capturing the zeitgeist of the UK during the Thatcher period.

the companion to his TV cooking show, is an indictment of celebrity culture in Tony Blair’s Britain. But then reading on I was once again drawn in by the smartness of the writing, the insight into what was important for a teen boy, the cleverness of the characterisations.He also claims that his life is still not as happy as he would like, but 'that is another story' – suggesting that there is another diary to come. The series featured a theme song "Profoundly in Love With Pandora" by Ian Dury and the Blockheads and starred Gian Sammarco as Adrian Mole with Julie Walters playing his mother and Lindsey Stagg as Pandora Braithwaite. I've always wanted to look clever, but at the age of twenty years and three months I have to admit that I look like a person who has never even heard of Jung or Updike.

He eventually joins the army and at the end of the last book is expecting a baby with his fiancée, Finley-Rose. Another of his works The Restless Tadpole: an Opus is described by one potential agent as "effete crap". Still a fine r ead, and if only for nostalgic 40 or 50 somethings rather than today's teenagers this remains a cracking nsight into the psyche of the young person. Later, George and Pauline effect a partner swap with Ivan and Tania Braithwaite (parents of Pandora), only to reunite after Ivan's untimely death. The story is set in 1981 and 1982, and in the background it refers to some of the historic world events of the time, such as the Falklands War and the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana as well as the birth of Prince William.For the first time between the covers of one book, these are the complete Adrian Mole diaries, taking him from 13 3/4 to 23 3/4. In what was apparently supposed to be a retrospectively-written preface to the re-published Diaries, Mole notes their re-publication in novel-form and suggests that Townsend is impersonating him and profiting from his writings. Though by the last part of the book, although still obnoxious and mildly annoying (at 23), I didn't want to hit him at least, so can recommend the last portion of the book just for the slight lack of irritation.

It is 30 years since Adrian Mole leapt into the national consciousness from the pen of Sue Townsend, and to mark the occasion Penguin are re-issuing all eight volumes of the Mole saga. I am thirteen and I have just read this amazing book, before I get started on my review I would like to say how fantastic this book was to read - I read it for exactly three hours straight since the moment I got it. In addition, Adrian Plass's novel The Sacred Diary of Adrian Aged 37¾ and his autobiography The Growing Up Pains of Adrian Plass parody the titles of two of the Mole books.The 'same age as Jesus when he died', Adrian Mole has become a martyr: a single-father bringing up two young boys in an uncaring world. Worse, as he slides down the employment ladder, from deskbound civil servant in Oxford to part-time washer-upper in Soho, he finds that critical reception for his epic novel, Lo! His loyal friend and co-worker Bernard Hopkins comes to the rescue, moving in with him and promising to remain until his cancer is in remission. In an interview in the Guardian with Kate Kellaway in 2010, Sue said that “the only way I’ll kill Adrian is when I die myself”. He is now a fifteen-year-old boy living in 1982 and is happy for his parents to get back together, only to suffer the embarrassment of his mother falling pregnant.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment