During the 1980s, Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books sold more copies than any other work of fiction in Britain. These books captured the zeitgeist of their moment and introduced readers to “one of literature’s most endearing figures” (The Observer). The series starts out as a coming-of-age during the Thatcher years following the titular character in his boyhood and continues until he is middle aged and grappling with divorce, debt, cancer, and professional frustration.
Before they were a bestselling series of novels, however, Adrian Mole’s misadventures had already begun in magazines and on BBC Radio 4. Since the initial publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole in 1982, the stories have been adapted to television, radio, the musical stage, and even computer games.
The “laugh-out-loud funny” (New York Times) books themselves are where the real story of Adrian Mole happens, though, and here’s how you can read them all, in order, and experience one of Britain’s most beloved phenomena for yourself!
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
Having sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole has enjoyed the kind of success that its young narrator would love to see for himself. A thwarted would-be intellectual born into a working class family, young Adrian Mole has grand ambitions—but is bound to never achieve them. His love life is in shambles, he has few friends, the BBC won’t publish his poems, and he is concerned about his parents’ marriage—all this and more he records in his diary, producing a one-of-a-kind portrait of a unique individual in an all-too-familiar world of frustrations and disappointments.
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
“Adrian Mole is as engaging as ever” (Time Out) in this sequel to the bestselling Secret Diary, which sees a still angsty Adrian Mole at the tender age of 15.
“Townsend’s wit is razor sharp” (The Mirror) as she engages (through the point of view of her teenage protagonist) with everything from political upheavals surrounding the Falklands to Adrian’s own struggles with passing his exams, the on-again, off-again romance with his childhood sweetheart, and developing a sudden allergy to non-precious metals.
True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole
Now growing into a young adult, Adrian Mole is finally finding some limited success as an author, but his problems are greater than ever. It seems that some woman named Sue Townsend has stolen his diaries and published them to great acclaim, rocketing them to bestseller status and being hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “a national treasure” and The Guardian as “one of Britain’s most celebrated comic writers”.
What’s a young intellectual to do? Continue his diaries, of course, filled with the events and misadventures of his young life that have kept readers spellbound for years.
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
Sue Townsend’s “achingly funny anti-hero” (Daily Mail) is all grown up—at least somewhat. Now an angsty twentysomething instead of an angsty teenager, Adrian Mole still has problems aplenty, but he thinks maybe he’s making progress. He’s dating a Nigerian waitress named JoJo, who he will eventually marry, and he has even added vowels back into his first novel, a move that is guaranteed to make it more accessible to the masses in this “brilliant comic creation” (The Times) that chronicles Adrian Mole’s young adulthood.
Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years
Things are certainly up and down for Adrian Mole as he heads into his thirties. He’s on the verge of divorce, and his parents have become swingers with the parents of his childhood sweetheart who is, herself, running for political office.
On the plus side, however, he has found himself in the unlikely position of celebrity chef on the program Offally Good! He’s even been contracted to write a book to go with the show…so, of course, he’s suffering from writer’s block in this “wickedly satirical, mad, ferociously farcical” book (Daily Mail) that is “quite possibly, a classic” (Daily Mirror).
The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999–2001
“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” raves the Kansas City Star, and that’s certainly true in this seventh of the eight Adrian Mole books. Though written and published after Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, these “lost diaries” take place before that book, and find Adrian living in a converted pigsty near his parents as he tries to get a serial killer-based television show off the ground while navigating the perils of modern life, fatherhood, and much more in “probably the most successful comic literary creation of the past two decades” (The Observer).
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction
Adrian’s son Glenn has joined the British Army and is stationed in Iraq in “the latest careening satire to emerge from Sue Townsend’s wickedly literary rocket launcher” (Seattle Times). As has been the case throughout the Adrian Mole books, Weapons of Mass Destruction combines humor and insights into the daily life of Adrian Mole—in this case, he has leveraged himself massively into debt that he cannot ever hope to repay—alongside satire of global politics in a book that is “complex, funny and wrenching” (Publishers Weekly).
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years
The once angsty adolescent is entering middle age in the final Adrian Mole book, published only a few years before Sue Townsend passed away following a stroke. Adrian has health problems of his own—namely, cancer. And those aren’t his only troubles, either. His wife has left him. His son is still stationed overseas. His young daughter may be becoming a Stalinist, and Adrian has never achieved any of the grand ambitions he had for himself when he was young. The result is “a tour de force by a comic genius” (Daily Mail) that is “like rediscovering an old school friend on Facebook” (Time Out).
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