Empowering Bright & Gifted Children

 

Author: Sue Townsend

Interest Level: Upper Grades (9-12)
ATOS Reading Levels: 5.1-5.8
AR Points: 7.0-8.0
Publisher Recommended Age: 12+
Publisher: HarperCollins/Perennial
Book Type: Paperback (2 books published together as one book)
Pages: 293

 

 

The multi-million copy masterpiece of irreverence! Sue Townsend's hilarious, heartrending memoir of a British teenager named Adrian Mole became the biggest surprise bestseller in publishing history when it first appeared in 1982. After several years on the bestseller lists, a hit musical, a TV series, an five million sold -- Adrian is still going strong!

 

The book sold here contains the two most popular books in the Adrian Mole series. The additional books in the series are out of print and are listed below.

 

 

 

The first book in the Adrian Mole series of comedic fiction, written by Sue Townsend. It focuses on the worries and regrets of a teenager who believes himself to be an intellectual. The book is written in a diary style and set in 1981 and 1982. It chronicles the supposed intellectual awakening of Adrian Albert Mole, and his wonderings, worries and woes. In the background, it refers to some of the historic world events of the time. Apart from the sometimes hilarious events described in the diary, a lot of the typical humour originates from the reader immediately seeing through particular observations, while the boy pertinently and naively misinterprets them.

 

 

At fourteen, Adrian Mole's life continues to be nothing but a set of tragic circumstances: His tempestuous relationship with an alluring schoolmate tortures him, while his intellectualism continues to be ignored by the British press.

 

 

 

 

Adrian Mole has grown up. At least that’s what it says on his passport. But living at home, clinging to his threadbare cuddly rabbit ‘Pinky’, working as a paper pusher for the DoE and pining for the love of his life Pandora has proved to him that adulthood isn’t quite what he hoped it would be. Still, intellectual poets can’t always have things their own way …

 

 

Adrian Mole has at last reached physical maturity, but he can’t help roaming the pages of his diary like an untamed adolescent. Finally given the heave-ho by Pandora, he seeks solace in the arms of Bianca, a qualified hydraulic engineer masquerading as a waitress. Between his dishwashing job and completing his epic novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, Adrian hopes that fame and fortune will not keep him waiting much longer.

 

 

In his latest confessional diary, Adrian, now thirty, is separated from his exotic and accomplished Nigerian wife, and is a single parent to his three-year-old son. He works as a cook in a smart London restaurant that specializes in repulsive working-class food. When, to his surprise, he finds he has an older son as well, he takes responsibility and finally learns to cope.

 

 

Adrian Mole, now age thirty-four and three quarters, needs proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction so he can get a refund from a travel agency of the deposit he paid on a trip to Cyprus. Naturally, he writes to Tony Blair for some evidence. He's engaged to Marigold, but obsessed with her voluptuous sister. And he is so deeply in debt to banks and credit card companies that it would take more than twice his monthly salary to ever repay them. He needs a guest speaker for his creative writing group's dinner in Leicestershire and wonders if the prime minister's wife is available.

 

 

Susan Lillian "Sue" Townsend (born 2 April 1946) is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Adrian Mole series of books. Her writing tends to combine comedy with social commentary, though she has written purely dramatic works as well. She has suffered from diabetes for many years, as a result of which she was registered blind in 2001, and has woven this theme into her work.

 

Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946 and went to Glen Hills Primary school, where the school secretary was Mrs Claricotes, a name she used for the school secretary in the books. Her father was a postman and she was the eldest of three sisters. After failing her 11-plus exam, Townsend then went to the secondary modern South Wigston High School.

 

She left school at the age of 15 and worked in a variety of jobs including factory worker and shop assistant. She married a sheet-metal worker and had three children under five by the time she was 22. She joined a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester in her thirties.

 

She has four children: Sean, Daniel, Victoria and Elizabeth.

 

At the time of writing the first Mole book, Sue Townsend was living on the Saffron Lane Estate, a stone's-throw away from the house in which playwright Joe Orton was brought up.