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Synopsis

Adrian Mole is 39 and a quarter. Unable to afford the mortgage on his riverside apartment, he has been forced to move into a semi-detached converted pigsty next door to his parents, George and Pauline. His ravishing wife Daisy loathes the countryside, longs for Dean Street and has yet to buy a pair of Wellingtons; they are both aware the passion has gone out of their marriage, but neither knows how to reignite the flame. To cap it all off, Adrian is leaving his bed numerous times a night to go to the lavatory and has other alarming symptoms, leading him to suspect prostate trouble.

Meanwhile, his mother thinks that an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle show might solve the mystery of her daughter's paternity once and for all. And when George is asked to provide a DNA sample, will the shock kill him? He is already disabled, though still chain smoking and has had an ashtray welded onto the arm of his wheelchair.

As Adrian's worries multiply, a phone call to his old flame Dr Pandora Braithwaite, BA, MA, PhD, MP and Junior Minister in the Foreign Office, ignites memories of a shared passion and makes him wonder - is she the only one who can save him now?

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Reviews

Customer Review: 06 November 2009

Reviewer: Robert Mole

'I started laughing when I read the title, this book is an absolute hoot! A must-read for all Mole fans. :o)'

Critic Review:

“Sue Townsend has always had an unflinching sense of humour – the more incongruously awful the situation, the more she can make us laugh. She is not frightened about being funny about sickness… Townsend squeezes tender comedy from every aspect of what the medical profession now likes to call his ‘cancer journey…’ It is all sweetly funny. It is also the gentlest portrayal of the reality of cancer treatment that one could hope to read, profoundly sad but completely undepressing… this is a seriously lovely book.”
— Sunday Times
 
“Sue Townsend really knows how to hit the nail on the head… Townsend’s novels are little hymns to the power of family and community to make life bearable.”
— The Guardian
 
“As always, Townsend ensures the funnier aspects of Adrian’s life are combined with touching emotion and the seriousness of the issues affecting the world around him.  This genius read will make you love Adrian all over again.”
— Closer Magazine
 
''The latest of Adrian Mole's diaries is every bit as brilliant as the last. Sue Townsend is a hilarious genius and this is not to be missed!”
— OK! HOT STARS

"The real greatness of Townsend's creation comes from the gap between aspiration and reality.  Adrian Mole is one of literature's great underachievers; his tragedy is that he knows it and the sadness of this undercuts the humour and makes us laugh not until, but while, it hurts."
— Daily Mail

“Adrian Mole is one of the great comic characters of our time… (Townsend) never writes a sentence which doesn’t ring true; she never gets Adrian’s voice wrong or attributes a thought or feeling to him which strikes one as false… Whatever happens, we may be sure that new troubles will assail Adrian, that new disasters will threaten, but that he will survive them all.  Like Evelyn Waugh’s Captain Grimes, Adrian is “one of the immortals” and the series of his diaries the comic masterpiece of our time.”
— The Scotsman

“Twenty—seven years on from the publication of his first diary, here are the latest ruleful and hilarious extracts from the journals of the hapless but ever—hopeful Samuel Pepys of the Midlands … It sounds grim stuff, but the extraordinary alchemy of Townsend’s resilient and resourceful humour turns it all into comic gold.”
— The Sunday Times

“An exquisite social comedy”
— Lorna Bradbury in The Daily Telegraph

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