Review
Praise for the Adrian Mole Novels
“Part Woody Allen, part a kindred spirit to the heroes of Philip Roth’s early novellas, Adrian inspires a rare warmth and affection. . . . As sad and devastating as it is laugh-out-loud funny . . . A delight!” —The New York Times
“Screamingly funny . . . Set to become as much a cult book as The Catcher in the Rye.” —Jilly Cooper on The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾
“Adrian Mole is the truth behind the dream we shared when we read The Catcher in the Rye and discovered that we were all Holden Caulfields. A phenomenon!” —The Washington Post
“Highly entertaining. Sharply observed. Succeeds brilliantly!” —The Village Voice
“Townsend’s considerable achievement is to have created a world that is underscored with sadness and disaster and yet hilarious as viewed through the increasingly appalled eyes of Adrian.” —Time Out
“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. It’s that kind of book.” —Kansas City Star
“Long before Bridget Jones obsessed about weight, single life and alcohol units, Adrian Mole reigned as Britain’s Diarist of Record.” —The Miami Herald
“Loveable in its celebration of mediocrity, it’s told with Townsend’s trademark deadpan humour. To people of a certain age, Adrian Mole was their Harry Potter.” —News of the World
“[Townsend is] the funniest person in the world.” —Caitlin Moran
“The crisply hilarious saga of Britain’s favorite fictional diarist.” —Booklist on Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years
About the Author
Sue Townsend was born in Leicester, England, in 1946. Despite not learning to read until the age of eight, leaving school at fifteen with no qualifications, and having three children by the time she was in her mid-twenties, she managed to be very well read. Townsend wrote secretly for twenty years, and after joining a writers’ group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, she won a Thames Television Award for her first play, Womberang, and became a professional playwright and novelist. Following the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, she continued to make the nation laugh and prick its conscience with seven more volumes of Adrian’s diaries, five popular novels—including The Queen and I, Number Ten, and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year—and numerous well-received plays. Townsend passed away in 2014 at the age of sixty-eight, and remains widely regarded as Britain’s favorite comic writer.
