The Adrian Mole diaries: The secret diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4.The growing pains of Adrian Mole

This volume incorporates The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, previously published separately in the UK. Adrian Mole lives about 100 miles from London, and he comes before us between the ages of 14 and 16. Most of his diary entries, which start January 1982, extend less than half a page. But thanks to Sue Townsend's insight into social change, family dynamics today, and adolescent psychology, the diary format reaps solid gains. Troubled by acne and a wobbling, shrilling voice, Adrian cannot find himself. He falls in love, writes poetry and fiction, joins a gang, and runs away from home. A self-styled ``existentialist nihilist,'' he is diagnosed as ``suffering from a depressive illness brought on by worry.'' That most of his worries stem from his virtues, rather than his faults, open our hearts to him straightaway; no one can win our sympathy faster than an underdog who cannot defend himself and does not know where to find help-especially when the underdog soldiers on alone. Adrian cooks, shops, and cleans house-not only for his alcoholic, layabout parents but also for an 89-year-old pensioner. Yet he is not fooled by adult vanity, selfishness, and hypocrisy. Perhaps the outstanding triumph of this triumphant book comes in Townsend's ability to relate Adrian's internal changes to those occurring in both his family and society at large. No one-note writer, Townsend will not let her sharply perceived data chill into a formula. Her book's rich, warm flow will enchant-and surprise-the reader from start to finish. A good acquisition for college, community college and public libraries.-P. Wolfe, University of Missouri-St. Louis

The hilarious, touching, fictional diary of a British teenage would-be intellectual suffering his parents' strained marriage and his own inadequacies. (My 1 86)

Adrian is 13 years old when we get our first look at his diary, and he has a spot on his chin. For the next two and a half years, dozens of wearisome spots plague him, along with the vitamin-deficient meals his parents supply, his horror of physical exercise and the length of his ``thing,'' which he measures indefatigably. An insatiable reader, he inquires of the cultural department at the BBC how to become an Intellectual, an enterprise hobbled by the superior brilliance of his girfriend Pandora, who prefers to be called Box. But his solipsistic preoccupations are interrupted by his mother's affair with the next-door neighbor, his father's with the woman down the block, his father's job redundancy and subsequent problems with the Dole, and especially by the demands of Bert Baxter, an old-age pensioner whom Adrian, as a member of the Good Samaritans, has agreed to visit. This is nothing, however, to the blow to his pride when his mother becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby who seems to make Adrian himself redundant. Townsend's wry depiction of Adrian's adolescence should make even the soberest reader laugh out loud. But underneath the humor there are provocative thoughts about family relationships and contemporary society. In Britain, the books (the original and a sequel, here combined into one volume) sold some five million copies, inspired a long-running musical and a TV miniseries, and made Adrian Mole a household name. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (collected here as The Adrian Mole Diaries) are two novels that have sold five million copies in Great Britain in the last three years and spawned television shows, home computer games, and videocassettes. Although the Diaries are a pleasant-enough story of the coming-of-age of a smart, alecky adolescent, it's hard to see what the fuss is all about. Adrian is an obsessively neat, hypochondriacal 14-year-old who begins his diary by primly recounting his parents' New Year's Eve antics: ""My father got the dog drunk on cherry brandy at the party last night. . . I feel rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning."" According to Adrian, he's the only sane, mature person in the family, and this seems borne out when his mother runs away with the insurance salesman next door, and his father loses his job selling electrical heaters and is forced to become a canal bank restorer. When not recounting his domestic woes, Adrian sets down his troubles at school: he's forced to pay protection money to the local bully; he's in love with the beauteous Pandora, who won't let him get to first base; his literary magazine, The Voice of Youth (written entirely by Adrian), is an enormous flop. Adrian's parents finally get back together, and even have another baby; Adrian runs away, in protest, but returns to a happy ending, as Pandora lets him get as far as third base. Adrian can be charming, but he's a familiar type, and almost 350 pages of daily diary entries dealing with his wacky parents and the seemingly endless vicissitudes of the family dog can wear a reader down. The book is really less a novel than a collection of one-liners (it started out as a radio play) with a lot of static in between--staying tuned in simply isn't worth the effort. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.