The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999 – 2001 by Sue Townsend

I was attracted to this book because it was lying in the cheap bin at Chapters…there, I’ve said it – I’m a cheapo! Also, I’d heard somewhere (perhaps on radio?) about Adrian Mole but had never really followed up on whatever craze it was. Lastly, I read the blurb on the inside cover (it was Hardcover btw and still CAD$ 4.99!) and was drawn to the fact that the story was British. I do have a hankering for stories set in England (a throwback of sorts from my childhood in London) but I know I do not want to live there…permanently. So books like this satisfy that yearning to ‘be a little British, without being British’! [Ok, enough of the preamble!]

Adrian Mole is a middle-aged man who thinks he has literary skills. He records almost everything that happens to him and his family, and often confides in his diary because he has no friends, well, no really good friends. His childhood sweetheart Pandora is an MP and uses him when she needs to but otherwise dismisses him…this makes him long for her even more. He has two sons Glenn and William, borne of different ‘mums’ – the former’s mother is a looser living in a council flat, fat and ugly (according to Adrian), who wants him back and makes every attempt to get him back. William’s mother is Nigerian and is called Jo-jo. She and Adrian divorced shortly after being married and she is now in Nigeria, married to a very rich man. Adrian’s parents marry three times, the second time, after being married to Pandora Braithwaite’s parents i.e. Adrian’s mother marries Pandora’s father and Adrian’s father Pandora’s mother!

Since it is a diary, it really has no plot. Adrian is a single parent, living on a council estate Ashby de la Zouch near Leicester. He is ashamed to be living there since he thinks it is beneath him but since he doesn’t have a job, he has no choice. He says he has published two cookbooks on the cooking of Offal: Offaly Good and Offaly Good Again but the BBC won’t buy any of his stories and so he thinks the literary establishment is out to get him. His titles range from “The Restless Tadpole (an ‘epic’ poem) to Krog from Gork (a neolithic novel set in a time when language was not invented) to Jack & John Towers (written in the wake of the 911 twin towers disaster!). He spends many days trying to lure his Welfare officer Pamela Pigg into bed (she is cold and boring), and then when his several efforts fail, he transfers his attentions to Mary Lou Hattersley, the creche supervisor at the local Safeway Grocery store. He is so enamored by Mary Lou that when his toddler son William refuses to go to the creche every day, just so that Adrian can see his lady-love, Adrian borrows the next door neighbor’s child, calls her Emily, drops her off at the Creche and strikes up a conversation with Mary Lou only to find out that baby Emily is a he when he pees in his Y-fronts and needs to be changed!

Something that made me giggle a bit: Adrian tells us of a report from Midlands Today (News Report) where a farmer was lamenting the fact that he was forced to feed his livestock with British Airways Left Overs – they should try Air Canada regular food, not even the left overs! His half Nigerian son William was called a ‘mongrel’ at school and Adrian took the time to remind him of his rich ‘blood’ – Nigerian Aristocracy, Norfolk Potato farmer, Scottish Engine Driver, Welsh Witch…”. When his half-brother Brett moves in from Oxford, Adrian immediately hates that he came ‘down from Balliol’, is a published author and has contacts. Brett writes an article called “The Osama Bin Laden I knew”, full of lies (according to Adrian) and recounts a comment Bin Laden made when accused of not being British: “I am a British Citizen, I hate slugs, and I visit a garden center many times a year. Also, I watch the whores of western culture on Eastenders“. lol

‘The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole’ is a relaxing read. I could read a few chapters, do other stuff and come back to it. It was definitely not gripping and I don’t think it was meant to be. It is a peek into the life of a wannabe writer who has no real critics to tell him he ‘hasn’t quite got what it takes so get off your behind and get a job’. It is filled with quirky lower middle class Britishisms that give insight into how the buying of a particular daily paper can define who you are, where you live and how you live. I felt I knew Adrian so in that regard, the character development was strong and his character came across as sympathetic but a tad annoying. I think I have met a few Adrian Moles. All the other characters, even his old school chum Mohamed from the petrol (gas, for you Americans)  station are well-developed except for the one African in the story – his ex-wife Jo-jo, the Nigerian ‘princess’. Firstly, I know of no Nigerian called Jo-jo (let me know if you do!) and I cannot for the life of me imagine any Nigerian woman, presumably well-educated and from a dynastic and wealthy family in Nigeria who would have a baby with anyone and leave the baby to be raised by him. Throw in the fact that Adrian is very lower middle class (which probably implies she married him for immigration purposes?) and lives in a crime infested neighborhood…I cannot see Jo-jo leaving her ‘fair-skinned child’ to be raised by an unemployed man in Ashby de la Zouch! That for me was a departure from reality but not enough to take me away from the story. I suspect Sue Townsend (the author) knew little about Nigerian (or African) ways and so she did not develop that story line…smart woman! I also liked the fact that she put herself in the story as the person who stole Adrian’s diaries and tried to publish them. Clever and quite tongue-in-cheek.

So, Ms. Townsend, I shall give your book an 7.5/10. This is very good on my scale since Penny Vincenzi, despite her 1000-page tomes would rate a 7/10 for most of her books and Colleen McCollough’s Rome Series (Caesar’s women, Fortune’s Favourites, The Grass Crown etc) would rate an 8.75. I will definitely buy another Adrian Mole book by Ms. Townsend – I like this style of writing – doesn’t jar on the brain and can send you to sleep with a smile on your face if you’re the kind who reads in bed!

Next book: The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar.