Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
Penguin UK (2002), 160 pages
Description
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 . . .
User reviews
LibraryThing member FicusFan
This is the 3rd book in the Adrian Mole series, about a hapless teen in the UK in the 80s. He writes a series of letters and diaries that are often very funny. This book wasn't. The Adrian Mole part was very short, not book length at all, and really covered nothing new in Adrian's journey through
I just got it from a Book Mooch, because I wanted to complete the series.
The book also has diary entries from the author Sue Townsend, and from someone called Margaret Hilda Roberts, which appears to be the demented childhood of Margaret Thatcher, to actually make 117 pages.
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life.I just got it from a Book Mooch, because I wanted to complete the series.
The book also has diary entries from the author Sue Townsend, and from someone called Margaret Hilda Roberts, which appears to be the demented childhood of Margaret Thatcher, to actually make 117 pages.
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LibraryThing member elkiedee
This book is slightly different from the others in the series in several ways, I think. Most instalments of the Mole diaries are longer, and contain a novel in diary form, with the diary entries being quite frequent over a period of a year or so. This is the equivalent of a short story collection,
As he grows up Adrian seems to be a sadder character in some ways - there are pieces of diary about his frustrations at work. He is still profoundly in love with Pandora Braithwaite but she has gone to university while he's still in Leicester, stuck at home until he's forced to move out. There are still some very funny moments though, including Adrian's trip to Moscow with Pandora's dad - how Adrian comes to visit Moscow is a bit far fetched but it's almost justified by some of the funny bits of that story.
Adrian's diary only takes up 87 pages of the book - there are some pieces by Sue Townsend herself, some of which may have been reprinted from other publications. I especially enjoyed her trip to Russia in the late 80s with a number of other writers.
The final contribution is allegedly the diary of a teenage girl, one Margaret Hilda Roberts, who comments with horror in her diary about the introduction of free school milk. In 1974, then Education Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher was to become known as "Milk Snatcher" for taking this milk away - I liked this bit because I still remember how sad I was to lose my milk when I turned 7. This is the diary of a teenage sociopath and is probably most enjoyable to those who share the author's very left wing views.
This book is probably of most interest to fans of the series and those who like books which comment on the politics of Britain in the late 1980s.
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with shorter bits of Adrian's diary recounting significant moments through his late teens into early adulthood, between 1984 and 1989. I'm not sure if Sue Townsend expected to be writing about Mole into his 40s at this time! As he grows up Adrian seems to be a sadder character in some ways - there are pieces of diary about his frustrations at work. He is still profoundly in love with Pandora Braithwaite but she has gone to university while he's still in Leicester, stuck at home until he's forced to move out. There are still some very funny moments though, including Adrian's trip to Moscow with Pandora's dad - how Adrian comes to visit Moscow is a bit far fetched but it's almost justified by some of the funny bits of that story.
Adrian's diary only takes up 87 pages of the book - there are some pieces by Sue Townsend herself, some of which may have been reprinted from other publications. I especially enjoyed her trip to Russia in the late 80s with a number of other writers.
The final contribution is allegedly the diary of a teenage girl, one Margaret Hilda Roberts, who comments with horror in her diary about the introduction of free school milk. In 1974, then Education Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher was to become known as "Milk Snatcher" for taking this milk away - I liked this bit because I still remember how sad I was to lose my milk when I turned 7. This is the diary of a teenage sociopath and is probably most enjoyable to those who share the author's very left wing views.
This book is probably of most interest to fans of the series and those who like books which comment on the politics of Britain in the late 1980s.
Show Less
LibraryThing member joanasimao
This one made me feel dumb 'cause I didn't get what she was trying to do with it. I liked the Adrian bits, but what the heck was everything else?
LibraryThing member -Eva-
The third installment of diary entries of Adrian Mole, transcripts of Adrian's Pirate Radio Four programs, extracts from Sue Townsend's own diaries, and diary entries from a teenage girl called Margaret Hilda Roberts (hmm...). This installment has some good parts in it, but since it contains short
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pieces of different writings, it's not quite as coherent as the previous books. The audiobook has different narrators for the different characters and they are all good, although Margaret sounds more like a child than she is supposed to be. Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
It looks as though Townsend was trying to break away from the compulsion to write sequels: the next few years of Adrian's life after Growing pains are compressed into a few letters and radio talks, and the book is padded out with a few pieces of Townsend's journalism in her own voice, as well as
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the short but very funny Margaret Hilda Roberts, a fragment from the diary of a neurotically overachieving schoolgirl growing up as a grocer's daughter in the thirties. She helps her father water down the dandelion & burdock, ticks off poor people for their improvidence and her headmistress for inefficiency, and has the local bobby arrest an unemployed cyclist called Tebbit for vagrancy. Townsend claims to have found this at a car-boot sale in Grantham, and expresses her regret that we have no way of knowing what happened to Margaret in later life... Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1989
Physical description
160 p.; 4.37 inches
ISBN
0141010851 / 9780141010854