The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend 11 out of 10

 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

11 out of 10

This magnum opus is Glorious, absolutely phenomenal, hilarious, fantastic, mirthful and we can go on – it has been a long time since this reader has been laughing for so long and intensely, while engaged with a book that could have been read maybe twenty or more years ago, considering that a version of it was in the hand and if memory does not play tricks, was there, in the bags, during a trip to Sofia, in Bulgaria, but given the outré title, it seemed at the time that this is not a serious work and it probably has a target made of children.

Fortunately, you can find this transcendental comedy on The Guardian’s 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction - and it is also part of the BBC compilation of 100 Most Influential Novels, with maybe more than 2,000,000 copies sold to this day, a narrative that is both engaging, simple, modern, knowledgeable of the time and the characters, extremely amusing and at times explosively funny, although there are so many sad, indeed disastrous aspects in the life of the hero, Adrian Mole, who has to go through the separation quarrels of the parents, who drink a lot – no, better said too much – and then do not appear to care much, if at all during periods, about the wellbeing of their child, who has very little to eat for days and for much longer periods, he is fed more than inadequately.

From the first New Year’s resolutions, through to consequent ones, the protagonist tries to ‘help the needy’ (the blind across the street), be kind to the dog – the poor animal is drunk on cherry brandy, is taken frequently to the vet, for various operations, during which coal, cotton and all kinds of other things are extracted from his stomach, ears- in fact, Adrian would help an old man who becomes his friend – in spite of the fact that the hero who is also the narrator admits there is nothing that they have in common, the old man smells, the main character does not and so on – Bert Baxter would be frequently helped by the younger Samaritan, who also saves his dog on occasion.

The teenager laments that he may end up in a children’s home, when in the first chapters, his parents drink so much, then they start quarreling, the mother gets very close to the neighbor – albeit it would take quite a long time for the innocent, ingénue to think of anything suspicious – the one who would be called the creep Lucas – in intimacy he would be Bimbo – the one who would be abandoned by his wife for…another woman, in a very agitated dynamic, the Mole parents seem to keep close even when this becomes a strange three way, up to the point where Pauline Mole would separate and go to live with creep Lucas in Sheffield, to be visited by her son, who would take a trip with the couple to the north…

Adrian would be unhappy with his single parent – who looks like a ‘poofter’ in his apron – when he (the father, not the boy) becomes unemployed – he used to laugh out loud at the ads for electric heaters, which he had tried to sell, whenever they came on television – and the pupil calls the school to say that his parent is mentally ill, trying to hide the shame of having a father without a job, and when they ask, he answers that he would call, if the parent becomes aggressive – the postman, who appears to read the cards, expresses a bizarre, inappropriate sympathy when he says that ‘he would give the mother a thrashing, if she were his wife, to which the hero thinks that he does not know his mother, for if anyone laid a finger on her, it could be the last thing they did’

If not every single sentence, then maybe every other is fantastically amusing, like for instance the description of Glasgow at 11 a.m. when he has counted 27 drunks over a distance of one mile, or dismissed creep Lucas and mother, as they prepared to walk up a mountain, or when the father takes the bottles from Bert, in his car, only to find he is left without petrol and therefore calls AA, only to have the man retort that he needs alcoholic anonymous, not the automobile club, then the fact that ‘mother went to a women’s workshop on self-defense, so that if my father moans at her for burning the toast, she will be able to karate chop his windpipe’…later, the rather medieval, sexist father says that ‘women ought to be at home, cooking, but he said that in a whisper, so that he would not be karate chopped to death.

After a long period of unemployment, George Mole is finally in a job as supervisor, only the crew he has is made up of a group of bizarre skinheads and punks, called Kev, Daz, Mav and other peculiar names, and when the father brings them home to celebrate some progress in their cleaning endeavors, Pauline mole and the Indian neighbor, Mrs. Singh are shocked to see these fellows walking one by one into the kitchen…another hilarious moment takes place with the start of the Falkland’s War, which is announced on the radio and when Adrian runs to announce his father, who is asleep in bed – when out of work, he does that often, if not always – and jumps out at the news that Argentina has invaded the islands, which he thought are just off the coast of Scotland, only to go back to sleep, when he learns that they are actually many thousands of miles away…

To add one more outstanding episode in this chef d’oeuvre that is full to the brim with them, one could mention the scene where the hero has some glue to use on the model airplane and when he is tempted to sniff it, to see what happens, instead of the expected ecstasy, he has his nose attached to the plane and George Mole has to take the son to the casualty room, where the doctor puts ‘glue sniffer’ in the records…

The interaction with Pandora, the girl that has first a penchant for Nigel, a friend of the main character and only in the later chapters becomes infatuated with our hero is also one of the highlights of this magnificent, overwhelming book that is such an Absolute Pleasure to read, the essential splendid comedy, Ultimate Joy and fabulous entertainment…