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Synopsis

Monday November 29

My mother’s gone right off me since Rosie was born. She was never a particularly attentive mother – I always had to clean my own shoes. But just lately I have been feeling emotionally deprived. If I turn out to be mentally deranged in adult life, it will all be my mother’s fault.

Troubled teenager Adrian Mole continues to struggle valiantly against the slings and arrows of growing up and his own family’s attempts to scar him for life. In between the ups and downs of his relationship with the divine Pandora and worrying that his genius is going unrecognized, Adrian Mole chronicles the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence.

Reviews

Customer Review: 02 February 2008

Reviewer: Jonathan Schofield

An innocent boy confronting a confusing adult universe and the complicated, murky morality of grown up life; I was struck by the freshness, sadness and humour of Sue Townsends writing in the growing pains of adrian mole and the remarkable way in which her satire is so movingly played out in the novel. Adrian is a Pooter figure, priggish, deluded, pompous and a little bit foolish, but he is also kind, passionate, loyal and sometimes devastatingly accurate in his observations of the greater foolishness and deceit of adult life. His parents infidelities, suburban morality, and politics are all observed by Adrian against a back drop of the Falklands war and the Thatcher era in british politics. Reading the novel in 2008, one is struck time and time again by the prescience of Sue Townsends authorial voice via the genius comic persona that is Adrian Mole. I first read the novel when i was roughly the same age as Adrian, and now as an adult, the novel seems darker, angrier and more moving than I remembered. The backdrop of the Falklands war is a real and persistent motif, and it is a testament to Adrians humanity that even though his arch enemy and bully Barry Kents brother is sent to war, Adrian can find it in his heart to worry about his wellbeing. If you have seen the film "this is england" by the acclaimed director Shane meadows which coincidentally is also about a young innocent in 1983 coming to terms with some harsh ideologies and the realities of a war, you may want to revisit "the growing pains" and you will gain an intelligent and moving account of that strange and difficult time in our not too distant past. In some ways i think this sequel, and to use another cinematic comparison Godfather II is a stronger, darker, richer examination of the themes first approached in the original.

Critic Review:

'Funny, moving and a poke in the eye for adult morality' 
Sunday Express

'Written with great verve, and showing an uncanny understanding of the young, Sue Townsend holds the balance between innocence and precocity and the result is both hilarious and salutary' 
Daily Telegraph

'Life's no fun for an adolescent intellectual. For the reader it's a hoot' 
New Statesman

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