book review the secret diary of adrian mole

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Swearing, rants, reviews, on every level, book review – the secret diary of adrian mole, aged 13 3/4 by sue townsend.

On January 1st 1981, Adrian Mole starts a diary. Adrian isn’t like every other British teenager: he’s an intellectual. He starts his diary as a way to convey his worries and frustrations with the world around him. His parents aren’t providing him with the life he deserves, the BBC keeps rejecting his poems, the love of his life keeps going off with other men, and nobody seems able to recognise his brilliance. Nigel is his only real friend and the only other person who pays him any real attention is the school bully. His home life isn’t much better as his parents are too busy arguing to notice him. Thankfully, he has his grandmother to provide him with a healthy meal and care for his numerous health issues. But when his parents split up, what will it mean for Adrian’s potential?

I wanted to like this book. I think it had a lot of comic potential thanks to its narcissistic and unreliable narrator. Adrian isn’t exactly a typical teenager but he has that all too familiar self-obsession. Adrian only sees the world as it relates to him and it causes him to paint very unkind views of his family. When his father struggles to pay the bills, Adrian is unsympathetic because, in his mind, his father should spend their money more wisely. The humour derives from his inability to read a situation as it really is and his misunderstandings are funny. At least at first.

The problem with the novel is that it is very one-note. The comedy never quite reaches beyond Adrian’s ego. The jokes are very much the same all the way through and there isn’t exactly a lot of different levels to enjoy. We don’t get an awful lot of emotion beyond indignation either. There is a sojourn in teen angst towards the end but it is all very superficial. I know that he was written as a hyperbolic figure but I feel as though he needed to be a little relatable. Narrators don’t need to be nice but they need to be engaging. Adrian’s shtick gets old very quickly.

Although, I can see how this would be a good book for a younger reader and regret not having read it at a younger age. There is definitely a sense of fun tied up within this novel and it is readable. I’m not always a fan of the diary format for a novel but the entries are brief and to the point. You get little bitesize chunks of silliness so you don’t get too bogged down in anything heavy. The book does touch on the difficult period in British history but, seen through Adrian’s eyes, it has a very different spin here. The unemployment and social difficulties are merely trivial compared to the things Adrian must go through. I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily a great reflection of what life was like for a teenager in Britain in the early 80s. However, there are bound to be elements to Adrian’s personality that resonate with everybody in some way.

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4 thoughts on “ book review – the secret diary of adrian mole, aged 13 3/4 by sue townsend ”.

I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s one of the greatest works in English literature, but it dominates its niche as few other books have. There is really nothing quite like it, though it has its host of imitators.

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That’s true. When you think of contemporary British coming of age novels, then this will most likely be near the top of the list.

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Wednesday 8 November 2017

Review: the secret diary of adrian mole aged 13 3/4.

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Looking back at The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4

We revisit an eighties classic, ITV's The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, adapted from Sue Townsend's terrific books...

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The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾  was a six-part ITV series broadcast in 1985, based on the book of the same name by Sue Townsend. It was followed by  The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole , another six-part series, based on the second book of the series. Both series dramatise the experiences and misadventures of nerdy teenager Adrian. There are later books in the series and further adaptations, but it’s the 1980s series we’re looking at today. As well as being funny and moving, it’s also a time capsule of life as a 1980s teenager.

Each episode opens with a stop-motion animated title sequence that does an exceptionally good job in getting across what the show’s about. It introduces the main elements of Adrian’s personal life along with some of the background events of that time such as the royal wedding between Diana Spencer and Prince Charles. The title music,  Profoundly In Love With Pandora  by Ian Dury, spent some time in the British charts, and also mentions some of the events from the books and series.

In terms of development, Adrian Mole followed a similar path to  The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy  as it started life as a BBC radio play. Then came the books, written in diary form, which were successful, and the TV series kicked off in 1985 with a double-length, 50-minute episode. It’s a comedy drama, shot on a low budget and has a style that could best be described as cheap and cheerful. The story is progressed by a series of diary extracts, lifted directly from the books and narrated by Adrian. These two factors, the limited budget and the use of diary extracts, sometimes gives the show a disjointed feel, and this adds a flavour of both a sitcom and a docu-drama. Fortunately, the setting is carried over from the books, so expect to see the sights of Leicester in the North of England, along with a healthy dose of regional accents.

The casting is mostly top-notch, beginning with lead actor Gian Sammarco. All too often, the teenage lead in a TV show is a streetwise kid with a perpetual one-liner up his sleeve, but Gian plays Adrian as a pure nerd. Adrian’s a sensitive lad, and quite clever, but he spends most of his time with his head firmly in the clouds. Many of the comedic moments spring from his obliviousness and lack of savvy. For example, there is a scene in which his mother is obviously having sex with the man from over the road, but he naively accepts her explanation that they are locked in the kitchen attempting to fix the water boiler.

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Even when he gets things wrong, however, the audience is on his side. He asks the librarian for copy of “Prejudice And Pride” by Jane Austen, remarking afterwards that he could tell that she was “dead impressed”. Bullied at school, unappreciated in his home life, who could blame Adrian for retreating into his own little world of his books and his poetry? Every now and then, he receives yet another rejection letter from the BBC for his poetry. Despite his pomposity and pretensions, Adrian’s naïveté and aspirations are endearing.

One of the most famous moments from the book comes from Adrian’s experimentation with substance abuse. Building model aeroplanes was a common nerdy activity for a youth in the 1980s. Cue Adrian indulging his curiosity about the practice of glue-sniffing. Glue-sniffing has a lower profile these days, but it was a major public health concern in the 1980s, and it often featured in teen dramas. However, this is Adrian Mole that we’re talking about, so before long, he is sat in the emergency room, next to his mother, with a plane stuck to the front of his nose. How embarrassing.

Like most 13 ¾ year olds, Adrian has a burgeoning interest in sex. Oddly, he takes regular measurements of his private parts and records the continually varying results in a graph, that he hides in plain sight, on his wall, marked “Norwegian Leather Exports”. Now, that’s nerdy. He seems to interpret the results as a kind of barometer of how things are going in life. On one occasion he accidentally catches a view of his neighbour’s underwear, and remarks to himself that it is surprisingly sexy for a church-going, middle-aged woman. Symbolically, this represents Adrian getting a view beneath the respectable veneer of society and its treatment of sex. His attempts to hide his top shelf “girlie” mags from his mum were another touchstone of adolescence in the 1980s. Shrewd observations such as this, on the part of Sue Townsend, are part of the reason that books were so successful.

A younger generation should still be able to relate to much of what goes on – the landscape has changed a bit but the landmarks are much the same. Adrian accidentally building up a gigantic phone bill that he then has to hide from his parents must have its modern-day parallel. No doubt, the parents of a 13 ¾ year old now shake their heads at how good kids today have things compared to their own generation.

Some of the social changes that were part of the 1980s are reflected in the storylines. For one thing, an increase in family break-up meant that a child no longer had an automatic expectation of a home with two parents. In addition, the North of England was hard hit by unemployment, particularly for low income, low skilled workers like the Mole family. Poor Adrian has to face uncertainties over his family’s ability to pay the bills along with the humiliation of not being able to afford a school uniform that fits properly. He comes from what looks like a nice home, but now that dad’s unemployed he has to hand in his homework covered in candle wax because the electricity has been cut off. It’s the acknowledgement of these social issues that pushes this series ahead of other teen dramas of the time.

There’s a general theme of Adrian’s dissatisfaction with the institutions that he comes into contact with such as family life, the school system, the welfare system and the government in general. His teachers, for example, range from a tearful, lefty mess to a Thatcher-worshipping disciplinarian, both utterly uninspiring. Speaking of school, bullying is also another problem that Adrian has to deal with, but he grimly accepts it as part of his lot in life.

Getting back to Adrian’s family, his parents are self-absorbed. They are, basically, good people, yet they fall short as role models and supportive parents. Adrian’s parents repeatedly act upon their whims, rather than in a responsible manner. This lack of self-control continually infuriates their sensible son. His mother, for example, is caught up in the women’s lib movement of the 1980s, but her take on things is a self-centred one. Dungaree-clad and clutching a copy of The Female Eunuch , she elopes with the man from across the street, leaving Adrian and his unemployed father to cope on their own. Mr Mole struggles to make the best of the challenging hand that he has been dealt and remains permanently depressed, untidy and crass. On one occasion, Adrian overhears that his parents are now arguing over who gets stuck with him. On another, they reduce him to tears while making a long list of what their ideal son would have been like. Before long, said dad has started seeing someone new, while Adrian tries to maintain a relationship with his mum over the phone. Without giving too much away, the situation culminates in a huge mess of unplanned pregnancies and fragmented families. Society was changing, and the kids were often at the sharp end.

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Stephen Moore is a character actor who constantly pops up in supporting roles in some of the best British TV programmes and films. Here, he plays Adrian’s father, and he’s great as usual. Setting up one of Moore’s best moments, Adrian attempts to eradicate the Noddy wallpaper of his childhood by painting his room entirely black, and to overcome the fumes, he burns some incense sticks. Upon this discovery, Dad throws them out of the window, angrily declaring, “I’m not having you messing around with drugs!” In another scene, panic-stricken, he leaps out of bed upon hearing that The Falkland Islands had just been invaded. He calms down somewhat when he discovers that they are not actually located off the coast of Scotland as he had originally believed. However, like most of the characters, although flawed, his heart is usually in the right place. When Adrian pontificates about his love for fellow swot Pandora, his dad is probably on the money when he opines with a wry smile, that if she were “as ugly as sin”, Adrian wouldn’t have noticed her intellect.

It was the general feeling at the time that government was extremely out of touch with issues affecting working class people, particularly in the North. From time to time, The Mole family come into contact with another staple of 1980s British life: government schemes. These were often well-meant but only worked on paper. In one episode, Adrian’s dad is given a job that puts him at the helm of a scheme to provide employment for young people. Adrian gets to witness how futile and absurd the whole thing is by watching his dad attempt to cajole a group of belligerent youths into helping to clear rubbish out of a canal.

The social strata of Adrian’s world is also explored through characters with different backgrounds. His love interest, Pandora Braithwaite, comes from a family that is superficially quite different from Adrian’s. Polite and well-educated, The Braithwaites are middle-class and deeply involved in right-on left-wing politics. Making the coffee that fuels one of Pandora’s committee meetings, they insist that Adrian call them by their first names and lend him socialist literature. The contrast with his own family life makes Adrian shift in his seat as his sits their immaculate living room. 

Pandora herself is played very well by Lindsey Stagg. Prim and proper she may be, but she quickly reverts to being a spoilt brat when she doesn’t get her own way on things. “Why am I going to Tunisia?” she laments before giving Adrian a goodbye hug. “It’s because your dad is rich,” the audience hears him comment. Like Gian Sammarco, Stagg left the acting profession before she could transition to adult roles.

Most of the rest of the cast is filled out with familiar faces of well-known British actors. Beryl Reid, playing Adrian’s paternal grandmother, is an old age pensioner whose values are rooted in those of pre-war Britain, offers yet another perspective on the proceedings as a character born around the start of the First World War. No wonder she refers to Adrian’s mum as “wanton”. When Adrian complains that he is feeling depressed, she replies: “Depressed? There was no such word when I was your age. We was too busy working morning, noon and night.” Adrian befriends another pensioner, Bert Baxter and gets a view of how the elderly are often discarded and undervalued. What does Adrian have to admire or believe in?

In the first series, Adrian’s mother is played by Julie Walters, and in the second series, singer Lulu makes a rare acting appearance in the same role. Both are very good. As is the case with Adrian’s father, the mother does sometimes come across as crass and ill-informed, but she also also acts a foil to Adrian’s pomposity and overly serious attitude. Both parents feel exasperated with their sensible son and his lack of enjoyment in things, his self-obsession and constant hypochondria.

Adrian’s best friend Nigel is played by Steven Mackintosh, an actor who went on to appear in dozens of TV shows. At times, he questions his sexual orientation, and this is a source of discussion between himself and Adrian, another indication of just how much society was changing in the 1980s. That said, it’s still an example of the way that Townsend was, thirty years ago, unafraid to explore the real issues of teenage life, and this was part of the appeal to the younger part of her audience. He is another example of the use of characters to explore different perspectives Adrian’s world too, as he has wealthy parents, and his racing bike, a typical wished-for possession for a teenage boy in 1980s, was a source of envy for Adrian.

Both series run end to end, giving us 12 episodes to get to know Adrian and his world, exploring teenage life and also the broader issues that were around at the time. Townsend herself felt that the books were intended for both an adult and a teenage audience, and these two series contain just as many laughs for both sets of viewers. Now, there’s a third group that can enjoy them – people who were children when the books and the series were conceived but who are now adults. It also serves as a great companion to the first two books because it’s faithful while still fleshing out scenes and characters. Sue Townsend was an exceptionally clever writer, and she had the knack of capturing themes that were specific to a time while, at the same time, also universal. The excellent source material provides a solid foundation for the series.

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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend - Review

Although this book was originally written by Sue Townsend in 1982, it remains a staple of every teenager's bookshelf to this day.

The book is written in a diary style by Adrian Mole, a thirteen year old boy who, although writes confidently, often misinterprets and does not understand the events that go on around him. The book follows him through the year of 1981 and a bit of 1982, starting with his new year's resolutions including "stopping squeezing my spots" and "vowing to never drink alcohol... after hearing disgusting noises from downstairs last night." Mole is a self-described intellectual who writes unreliably about the events he goes through and his troubles as an adolescent- resulting in a light-hearted and amusing book.

He writes bluntly about his parents' marital troubles and his own relationship with Pandora- a fellow Year 9 with beautiful "treacle hair". "Pandora and I are in love! It is official! She told Claire Nelson, who told Nigel, who told me." Adrian Mole also writes about his cringe-worthy poetry, his troubles at school, his acne problem, the Royal Wedding and his eighty-year old friend Bert, and numerous other events.

I would highly recommend this book. It is a hilarious book to read and is still relevant today. It is especially amusing if you are around Adrian's age (12-ish to 16-ish), because then you will really appreciate and understand when he says "Just my luck! Another spot on my chin!". It is not only witty, but deeply touching, too. Great as a stress reliever, this book will provide hours of entertainment for everyone.

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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

By Sue Townsend

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ is the first book in Sue Townsend’s brilliantly funny Adrian Mole series.

Friday January 2nd I felt rotten today. It’s my mother’s fault for singing ‘My Way’ at two o’clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children’s home.

Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents’ marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and ‘misunderstood intellectual’, Adrian’s painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

Bestselling author Sue Townsend has been Britain’s favourite comic writer for over three decades.

‘I not only wept, I howled and hooted and had to get up and walk around the room and wipe my eyes so that I could go on reading’ Tom Sharpe

‘A satire of our times. Very funny indeed’ Sunday Times

‘We laugh both at Mole and with him. A wonderful comic read, that, like all the best comedy, says something rather meaningful’ Heat

Sue Townsend is Britain’s favourite comic author. Her hugely successful novels include eight Adrian Mole books, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 55¾), Number Ten, Ghost Children, The Queen and I, Queen Camilla and The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year, all of which are highly acclaimed bestsellers. She has also written numerous well-received plays. She lives in Leicester, where she was born and grew up.

Resources for this book

• February 2019 Children's booklist - letters, diaries and memoirs
• Letters, Diaries and Memoirs Chatterbooks Pack
• Side-splitting stories for children booklist - middle grade books

I found this book quite sad, and slightly inappropriate for my age. Maybe should of left this one for the future.

funny and relatable, great book overall

Another recommendation from my mom and this book is pretty funny. Some of it is a bit old for me, but I still get it and find it funny.

Read this in my teenage years and Adrian Mole informed us that we are all odd and different and it's ok to be so. Very witty and clever

I didn't like the style of storytelling that much. It talked about doing it ( If you get what I mean) a bit too much. But he did so some exciting things on my birthday. I feel like I probably would have enjoyed the book a bit more of I were older.

This book is realistic fiction.

I loved the character Pandora, because she was very clever and rebellious. This story is about a boy called Adrian Mole who goes through crazy life experiences and journals about it in his diary.

I would recommend this book because it takes a lot of strange turns and can have some funny bits.

It was funny especially when he threw away the phone bill which was £289.19 plus £40 reconnection fee, plus a deposit of £40.

Read this dozens of times, and as a result, most of Sue Townsend's other works. May be a little dated with some references now, but the humour works on different levels. I love it!

It was very funny. I learnt a lot of new words which challenge my reading. I am 12 1/2 so nearly Adrians age so the jokes were relevant to me.

This book never fails to make me laugh. I have read it several times throughout my life and recently re-read it for part of this challenge. Townsend writes from the male teenage pedantic point of view with such brilliance and ease throughout the narrative. It is a book I recommend to all students; the political references and names mentioned are outdated, but Adrian's unrequited love of Pandora and his teenage angst and parental embarrassment will always resonate with young adults.

A really interesting book and I always enjoyed reading it.

I liked Adrian Mole the best as he is funny and entertaining and I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to laugh

Very funny.

I really liked this book because it explains it's not your fault if your parents are separating. My favourite character was Mum because tried was really kind to Adrian even when she was with Mr Lucas.I recommend this book to kids who have a hard time in school, with parents or anything else.

I found this one a little too old for me and not as funny as I had anticipated.

Even though this book is a bit inappropriate, it is still a great book. This book is for people who like books set as diaries

A book that is suitable for older readers. SO FUNNY!!!

I enjoyed the book but found some of the language and information too mature for a 10 year old.

I really like stories written in the form of a diary. Adrien is a 13-year-old "intellectual" with some issues at home, and this painfully relatable story pans out over a year of his life. I will definitely re-read this, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone still in primary school.

Loved all of the rude humour.

Adrian mole I would recommend this book to over tens. The life of a misunderstood intellectual who tries to survive with all the troubles in family, school, on the streets, his bedroom and his face.

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The Secret Diary and Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾

Adrian Mole turns 50 on 2 April. To celebrate, we’re helping him fulfil a lifelong ambition to publish his collected poems. Read more from the teenage Adrian on his dreams of literary success in  The Secret Diary and Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ …

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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Ages 133/4 Paperback – International Edition, November 24, 2009

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Reading age 12 - 14 years
• Book 1 of 8 Adrian Mole
• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
• Dimensions 5 x 0.65 x 7.8 inches
• Publisher Puffin
• Publication date November 24, 2009
• ISBN-10 9780141315980
• ISBN-13 978-0141315980
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0141315989
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Puffin; Re-issue edition (November 24, 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780141315980
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141315980
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 - 14 years
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.7 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.65 x 7.8 inches
• #5,040 in Teen & Young Adult Humorous Fiction
• #66,296 in Children's Humor
• #101,119 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

About the author

Sue townsend.

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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole

Sue Townsend

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1982

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