The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend

Format: Print
Read: March 2016 (re-read)

I am so happy that this book is as good as I remembered it being! The first time I read it, I think I was about 18 or 19, and I’d gotten a copy from the charity shop I volunteered in. I loved it then, and quickly read the whole series. Now 20ish years later (WTF!) I love it just as much, and I could read into the social commentary more than my first read. This book is so funny and so sharp, and while it was a phenomenon in the 1980s when it came out, I wish Sue Townsend got more recognition today for how brilliant this is.

I was racked with sexuality but it wore off when I helped my father put manure on our rose bed.

As the title suggests, this is the diary of a teenage boy, Adrian Mole, and it is contemporarily set in the early 1980s. He lives in Leicester with his parents and a dog, and he writes in his diary with the self-centred ignorance of a teenage boy. Adrian is pompous, fussy, and fancies himself an ‘intellectual.’ For some reason, the designers of later book editions, and the TV adaptation, decided he wears glasses, but this is never mentioned, so I don’t think he actually does, because I do believe he would have mentioned it!

None of the teachers at school have noticed that I am an intellectual. They will be sorry when I am famous.

There is so much story that happens between the lines, and often an adult reader will be a few days (or weeks) ahead of Adrian in realising what is happening with his parents’ marriage. Instead, he is occupied with his own teenage dramas, such as the number of spots on his face, sending his poems to the BBC, and his love for Pandora Braithwait.

Pandora!
I adore ya.
I implore ye
Don’t ignore me.

I don’t think many other books portray the British class divide as effortlessly as this one (certainly not any I have read). I am not old enough to have read this when it came out; I was born in 1988, so I have no experience of living through this period (Thatcher, second wave feminism), but I have read plenty of reviews and interviews with people who did and cite the incredible accuracy and relatability of it. The Moles are working class, and both of his parents also lean into stereotypes, and drink and smoke heavily, which is a humorous contrast to Adrian’s own sensibilities and lofty intellectual ambitions. They are also so financially unstable that when his father loses his job, they quickly plunge into poverty, unable to afford food and electricity bills.

My father was reading Playboy under cover of the candlelight and I was reading Hard Times by my key-ring torch.

Whereas Adrian’s love Pandora is from a middle-class family, with consciously left-wing parents who fall out over political ideologies. She even has a pony, which she is now too big to ride. His best friend Nigel is also from a more affluent family, who can afford a much nicer bike and electronics. There is also a fantastic bit where Adrian messes up his paper round and delivers the wrong papers to the wrong neighbourhoods, and the residents are all in uproar (The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian swapped for The Sun and The Mirror).

I must say that I take my hat off to Sainsbury’s, they seem to attract a better class of person. I saw a vicar choosing toilet paper; he chose a four-roll pack of purple three-ply. He must have money to burn! He could have bought some shiny white and given the difference to the poor. What a hypocrite!

I found there was also a sweet sense of community. Adrian makes friends with octogenarian Bert Baxter through his school’s Good Samaritan programme and really does make an effort to check on Bert and help him out in difficult times. The Moles, Pandora and her parents all pitch in too. It also subtly shows the growing cultural diversity in Leicester (which had a huge Asian population, and I think now might even be a non-white majority) as The Singhs, an Indian family, move in next door, take part in the Royal Wedding street party and also pitch in to help out Bert.

My favourite bit might be (it’s so hard to choose!) when he decides to paint over the Noddy wallpaper in his bedroom with some black emulsion paint, but the ghostly figures of Noddy and pals keep showing through.

Wednesday May 27th
Third coat. Slight improvement, only Noddy’s hat showing through now.

Friday May 29th
Went over hat bells with black felt-tip pen, did sixty-nine tonight, only a hundred and twenty-four to go.

We can all relate to that, right?

This book is just fantastic. Adrian deals with some tough times, but it is never bleak; it’s always relatable and very funny.

I have a new side hobby of seeking out podcast episodes where this book is discussed! I just love hearing people’s joys and nostalgia for them. I also just learned that apparently the BBC have started filming a new adaptation of it, and the people involved have me very excited about it (David Nicholls will be lead writer, and I’ve heard him on podcasts talking about his love for it). The set photos also look like Adrian does not have glasses, which, personally, I think is correct! I watched a bit of the 1985 adaptation, which has a theme song by Ian Dury, but was bothered by how the accents were wrong! They’re from Leicester, not Birmingham! I couldn’t get past it. Leicester gets so little representation in the media, it feels unfair.

Reading literary discussions of Adrian Mole (because it definitely has literary merit!) has got me to add Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossman (1892) to my reading list. This is a precursor to Adrian, and I love these hilarious slice-of-life diary format novels – from Adrian Mole to Bridget Jones to Georgia Nicols (Georgia is really my Adrian, it came out in 1999 when I was 11, and she is a part of me).