Adrian Mole: the Prostrate Years - Sue Townsend

Like many Brits I have grown up with Adrian Mole, I loved the secret diaries charting the thoughts of a geeky teenager growing up in a dysfunctional family in the 1980s and watching the series on TV too. Sue Townsend has continued to periodically write about Adrian's adult life but these books have been a bit hit and miss; the previous book in the series "The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001" was terrible with single parent Adrian coming across as a dislikeable and pretentious loser. I'm glad to say that "The Prostrate Years" is a big improvement on the Lost Diaries with Sue Townsend back to her old form. "The Prostrate ...  Read the complete review

This is a review of the book Adrian Mole The Prostrate Years by Sue Townsend. I'm a big fan of Sue Townsend, particularly the Mole diaries so I was anxiously awaiting the launch of this book. I tried to make myself wait until the Christmas hols to read and enjoy it but I caved in this week and bought it in a 'feeling sorry for myself' moment. I got the hardback book from Amazon for £8.54 - a bargain really. This time, Adrian's back at age 39 and it picks up from the last diarised novel (the Weapons of Mass Destruction). He begins the book in a traditional way, listing the things that are worrying him. New to him are the worrying signs of prostate ...  Read the complete review

I picked up the latest "Mole" at Heathrow Airport on the way back to Vienna, and ripped through it on the flight and on public transport within a couple of days. So was it so good that I really couldn't put it down? I tend to read an Adrian Mole with a slightly glib air of schadenfreude - possibly I tend to examine Mole's failings as a way of affirming my own life. Again with the latest Mole I found myself doing this. The fact is that Adrian fails to see the elephant in the room on occasions - a phrase that is mentioned several times (as well as the rhinoceros that Pandora speaks of). His myopic view of things - his name can surely not be pure ...  Read the complete review

Adrian Mole is one of Britain's most brilliant comic creations. He's neurotic, pedantic, courageless, but somehow very loveable. Many people will have grown up with the Mole books, and will empathise with Adrian's teenage days in the eighties, his newfound adulthood and responsibilities in the nineties, and his mid life crises in the noughties. Now he's back, it's 2007 and Adrian is aged 39 ½. Adrian is living in a converted pigsty in Leicester with his wife Daisy and their four year old daughter Gracie. Living next door are Adrian's baby-boomer parents: the wheelchair bound George Mole and his flirtacious and attention-seeking wife Pauline. Adrian is still ...  Read the complete review