“The trouble with trying to read passages from the Adrian Mole diaries aloud is that you find yourself laughing so hard you can’t go on” (Kansas City Star). I wish that I could relate that I have found happiness and contentment . . . but, alas, I cannot—but that is another story . . . “Probably the most successful comic literary creation of the past two decades” vents his justified rage in these journals once confiscated by authorities—only to be hijacked yet again by a fraudster named Sue Townsend (TheObserver). Though Adrian has finally found the courage to confront her, the literary parasite refuses to put down her Stolichnaya and come to the door. Now a professional turkey-plucker with his dreams of becoming a serious novelist more elusive than ever, and his teenage passions for Pandora all but faded, Adrian Mole has settled with his new wife in a rural pigsty that’s spitting distance from his appalling mother and her (fourth, is it?) husband. There are two consolations: He has a son who fears gym class (poor little bird legs!), and he’s readying his serial-killer comedy for production. But really, there’s little about the twenty-first century that makes Adrian feel secure. Adrian Mole’s continuing chronicle of angst has sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, and been adapted for television and staged as a musical—truly “a phenomenon” (The Washington Post).
