Adrian Mole the Wilderness Years (Adrian Mole #) by Sue Townsend

Format: Print
Read: May 2026

The fourth novel in the series returns to the daily diary format. We start where Small Amphibians left off, in January 1991, and Adrian is now aged 23 3/4. He is still working for the DoE and living in Pandora’s Oxford box room, though tensions are running high with him wildly jealous of her relationship with Professor Cavendish.

I always struggle to review books in a series because, at a certain point, I am just repeating myself! Instead, this write-up is more of a recap of major plot points to help my memory, with some choice quotes!

Adrian is still struggling to build himself a stable life, and if I recall, will continue to, but this is how he remains the relatable everyman. After getting kicked out of Pandora’s (for continuing to slip passive-aggressive notes and poetic declarations of love under her bedroom door), he has lodgings with two different Oxford characters – Mrs Hedge (a recently divorced “oldish” woman in her mid-thirties), and then Dr Palmer, an academic researching why people go out to pubs. Dr Palmer gives Adrian his loft room in exchange for minding his 6 children while he’s out doing research.

‘Are you a teacher?’ I ventured.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m leading popular culture. We are trying to establish why people a research project on go out to pubs, discos, bingo sessions, to the cinema, that sort of thing.’
‘It’s to enjoy themselves, isn’t it?” I said.
Palmer laughed again. ‘Yeah, but I’ve got to stretch that very simplistic answer into a three-year study and a seven-hundred page book.’

At Pandora’s suggestion and recommendation, Adrian sees a therapist for a short while, an attractive woman named Leonora, whom he quickly becomes obsessed with …and creepy about. Otherwise, since getting away from Pandora (finally), he manages to have two girlfriends in this book! After a slow start in picking up on her signals, he has a very intense relationship with Bianca, an engineering graduate working at the local news agency. He lives with her in London, and gets a job as a potwasher in Savages, the restaurant where she’s waitressing while looking for an engineering job. This ends in a devastatingly Mole family way, something that Townsend seeds wonderfully, so you may start to suspect before it happens! Poor Adrian! By the end, he has met JoJo, a Nigerian art student who gets a job at Savages, and things are looking up.

Before moving in with Bianca in London, Adrian had another period of being jobless and homeless. He lost his DoE job in a typically Adrian way, and honestly, it’s incredible he kept that job for as long as he did! He snuck into his boss, Mr Brown’s, office and read his personnel file, and they got pissed off about it and wrote a petty resignation letter (which was accidentally delivered in a call back to the time Adrian sent My Braithwait’s resignation letter to the Labour Party!). The assessment of him by Brown was illuminating!

Tuesday July 16th
Brown had to have his surgical corset adjusted at the Radcliffe Hospital this morning, so I took the opportunity to go into his office and look at my file: MOLE – ADRIAN.’
FORESIGHT – NONE
PUNCTUALITY – POOR
INITIATIVE – NONE
RELIABILITY – QUITE GOOD
HONESTY – SUSPECTED OF PILFERING
POSTAGE STAMPS
ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY – POOR
RELATIONS WITH OTHERS – QUITE GOOD
I believe his ‘A’ level Biology qualification to be bogus.

There were also some genuinely touching emotional moments in this one. Grandma Mole dies, which is devastating to Adrian as she was the only family member that he felt supported and appreciated by, and who doted on him (probably too much). He goes back to Leicester for her funeral, and the way it is described is so real. This quote really got me. I remember feeling exactly this way at my Grandma’s funeral.

At midnight, I watched my parents spreading a white tablecloth over the dining room table, which had had its leaves fully extended. As they flapped and adjusted the cloth, one at either end, I had a sudden sense of being a member of the family.

This also results in Pauline and George getting back together again. Adrian thinks this is good for Rosie, but I don’t know – it’s never ended well before!

Adrian is working on his novel – Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland – throughout, and we are treated to passages and musings on his writing process. It even ends with a novel within the novel, as his protagonist is also a writer.

Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland explores late twentieth-century man and his dilemma, focusing on a ‘New Man’ living in a provincial city in England. The treatment is broadly Lawrentian, with a touch of Dostoievskian darkness and a tinge of Hardyesque lyricism.

There were a lot of historical events mentioned in 1991, but the one that caught my eye was about Robert Maxwell’s buying and saving The Mirror and then falling to his death off his yacht, The Lady Ghislain. Yeah, that Ghislain Maxwell – her father. Who knew in 1991 she would become an even bigger story? Also, John Major is the Prime Minister now, and Adrian is told he looks like him, which is a source of worry.

And there was also this silly bit which had me laughing for quite some time!

Monday April 15th
Went to see D.O.E. doctor, Dr Abrahams. I told him was depressed. He told me he was depressed. I told him that my life was meaningless, that my ambitions remained unrealised. He told me that his dream was to become the Queen’s gynaecologist by the age of 44. I asked him how old he was. He told me that he was 45. Poor old git

Overall, I am still having a great time with Adrian’s dairies, although they are getting more depressing as his luck is bad and he is slow to learn from his mistakes.

For Law of Fives, this was published in 1993.