Holey Moley! The book the editors forgot (The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001 - Sue Townsend)

Member Name: ms_memory

Product:	The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001 - Sue Townsend
Date:	10/04/09 (206 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A few laugh-out-loud moments; a look back at the tail end of 20th-century Britain

Disadvantages: Focuses too much on creepy Adrian himself; full of inconsistencies, little originality

I've been a huge fan of the Adrian Mole series for years, as well as other novels by Sue Townsend (The Queen and I, Queen Camilla etc.) and used to consider her a comic genius. When I was given this book for Christmas I expected it to be of the same high standard as Townend's others, but was soon disappointed.



*** Why "The Lost Diaries"? ***

This novel came out in 2008 and consists of columns that were originally published in The Guardian between 1999 and 2001. It is out of sync with the rest of the diaries, since the book published before this one, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, was set post-2001. The "Lost Diaries" contain a foreword written by Adrian in 2008, several years after the publication of the last book. Confused? You will be.

I think I must have missed the Guardian columns when they were published as I was a student back then and too poor to buy my own newspaper! So when I got this book for Christmas I was looking forward to filling in the gaps in my knowledge of Adrian's family saga.



*** The plot ***

Adrian is now in his early 30s and an unemployed single dad to Glenn, who's around 12/13, and William, who's still at primary school. Glenn's mother Sharon lives nearby and still carries a torch for Adrian, while William's mum, Jo-Jo, has returned to Nigeria and remarried. Adrian's mother is now living with Pandora Braithwaite's father, Ivan, while Adrian's father has shacked up with Ivan's wife, Tania. Pandora herself is an MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch but spends most of the book absent, working in London.


At the beginning of the book Adrian is forced to move out of his mother's house with the boys and is placed in a council house on the notoriously rough Gaitskell Estate. The rest of the book sees him coping with dodgy neighbours, problems at the boys' schools, clingy pensioners, his parents' various ailments and his disastrous love-life.



*** Themes ***

Like the previous Mole diaries, the book focuses on the trials and tribulations of everyday life in modern Britain and is full of wry observations and jokes about the state of society. Topics covered in this diary include the Big Brother phenomenon, the Millennium Dome, hospital superbugs, the fuel crisis of summer 2000, politically-correct school nativity plays and the goverment's post-9/11 terror strategy. The problem with this particular book is that much of it seems very contrived. Adrian typically complains about the way society is going, but seems to embrace it all at the same time. His character doesn't fit with the other books - in this one he's a TV-addict and less of a reader/wannabe intellectual.



*** Characterisation ***

There is very little to love about the Adrian character at all. He comes across as a selfish, snobbish, self-righteous, hypochondriac weirdo. While his idiosyncrasies have always been what made him funny, Townsend seems to have developed him into a wholly unsympathetic character in this novel. His observations about the women he meets, for example, and his obsession with them, are downright creepy, and he mentions past relationships where he has ended up stalking women. He is even physically repellent, described as looking 5 months' pregnant!

Unfortunately the book mainly concentrates on Adrian himself and there is less light relief from others than in the previous novels. His parents don't feature much, spending half the book in hospital, and Pandora is as one-dimensional as ever. The character of Glenn is quite likeable and sensible compared to his father, but he doesn't feature much either. The remaining characters are either flat stereotypes or exaggerated eccentrics (such as his half-brother Brett). A lot more could have been made of Adrian's sister Rosie and her relationship with the rest of the family, but as in most of the books, she is barely present.



*** Annoyances ***

It is obvious from the start that this book was not written in one go but comprises a series of columns. Information is often repeated; we are reminded about things that only happened 2 pages ago - obviously this was for the Guardian readers who might have missed an instalment. If you're reading the book in one or two sittings, though, it can get very tiresome.

What's worse, though, is the sheer carelessness that has gone into the editing. New storylines are started then abandoned, characters contradict themselves and Adrian's age seems to vary wildly through the book. One minute his mother is considering learning to drive, the next she is spotted driving onto a garage forecourt in her car. At one point Glenn is excluded from school, then it's never metioned again. There are further inaccuracies when Adrian reminisces about things that happened when he was at school e.g. things that Pandora was involved in when actually she didn't join the school until later on. Similarly, Adrian's 'best friend' Nigel is his mate and then later on inexplicably referred to as an enemy, which was quite confusing. Adrian's house also seems to grow and contract at whim, with the number of spare bedrooms fluctuating throught the book!

There are a lot more references to Adrian's schooldays in this diary than the others, which I think is down to the paucity of the storyline. It just serves to highlight the fact that the first couple of novels were vastly superior to this one. Many of the storylines, such as Adrian's friendship with a random pensioner, are regurgitated from previous books.

What really made me want to stop reading was when Sue Townsend herself entered the novel as a character who was 'stealing' Adrian Mole's life by writing about it. For me this was really scraping the bottom of the barrel on her part and ruined what used to be a fairly realistic series.

Nevertheless, I finished the book, and although I wasn't satisfied, it did give me a few laughs. As I mentioned above, this was written in 1999-2001. The subsequent book in the series, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, was written later on and was much better in my opinion, so it looks as though Townsend managed to regain her form and the Lost Diaries, with their depressing, old-before-his time Adrian, were just a blip. However, I've heard that the next book in the series will be entitled Adrian Mole: The Prostate Years, which doesn't exactly fill me with optimism!

Summary: Still worth reading if you want to follow the whole series, but not a patch on the other books