Book Review
~ Novels by Leicester Author Sue Townsend ~
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~ Sue Townsend ~
Sue
Townsend was born in Glen Hills, Glen Parva, Leicester in 1946, and
despite quitting school at 15, went on to become a household name after
her book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 sold millions of
copies in Britain and around the world. Sue attended Glen Hills Infants and Juniors
School starting in the autumn of 1951; I was there at the same time having
started in January of 1950. Sue's memories of those early days at that school are
reproduced in an article (Diary of a Schoolgirl Aged 4 � ) on this
website. Link
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Synopsis
A humorous story first published in 1982, which chronicles the life of a young adolescent boy living on an estate in Leicester. Daily, Adrian chronicles his family turmoils as he struggles with life, relationships and all of the typical teenage problems.
Synopsis
If you are not familiar with the Adrian Mole series, �Adie� is a young Leicester lad. In this, the second of the series of diaries and books about his life, we continue to follow that life as Adrian struggles with adolescent turmoil and his dysfunctional family.
Synopsis
These further writings take Adrian Mole from the ages of 16 to 21,
describing the young diarist's first job as a librarian, and his later
role at the Department of the Environment, where he struggles manfully to
preserve the Earth's ozone layer.
Synopsis
Contains the complete text of "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged
13 3/4" and "The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole" together
with the selection of diaries, letters and poems published in "The
True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole".
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Synopsis
Adrian Mole, now aged 23-and-three-quarters, is a gloomy lodger living in the box room of the brilliant and beautiful Pandora's Oxford flat, spurned and barely tolerated by his former boyhood sweetheart. He is still working at the Department of the Environment with special responsibility for newts.
Synopsis
Adrian Mole is balding, he's bitter and he's back, this time aged 30�. and working at the Hoi Polloy restaurant, Soho. He is spotted by a cable TV producer and ends up starring in a celebrity chef show celebrating offal. Though he may be older he's certainly no wiser, still passing his time by dreaming of Pandora (now a shining star in Tony Blair's New Government).
Synopsis
A revolutionary British government orders the Queen to abdicate and the
Royal family to vacate Buckingham Palace. Being rehoused on a council
estate in Leicester comes as a bit of a shock to Philip, Elizabeth and the
rest of the Royal Family. The intrusion of this family of "poshos"
is a shock for their new neighbours too.
Synopsis
Coventry Dakin's tale begins with her accidental murder of a man. Forced
to flee the law, she deserts her council estate, her boring husband and
two demanding children for the anonymity of London's cardboard city.
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Synopsis
Angela aborts an unwanted child. 17 years later, the child's father,
Christopher, cannot forget his grief. He seeks out Angela to know the
truth. Angela and Chris rekindle a passionate relationship which contains
the seed of a dangerous new life together.
Synopsis
There was once a rumour that women lacked humour. This collection seeks to
disprove the myth, and contains witty writings and one-liners from women
throughout history including Ruby Wax, French and Saunders, Kathy Lette
and Joyce Grenfell.
Reviews:
This Summer I read the latest hilarious Adrian Mole novel by Sue Townsend. If you are not familiar with the Adrian Mole series, �Adie� is a Leicester lad, and in the series of diaries and books about his life, we follow that life from his adolescent turmoil in Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 through to middle-age angst in the latest release: Adrian Mole, The Cappuccino Years. In nearly all of Sue�s novels, Leicester and Leicestershire are mentioned frequently; indeed, our area is often the setting for her stories. You also might want to consider another Sue Townsend book called The Queen and I. In this novel, the Royal Family are evicted from Buckingham Palace by a socialist government and forced to live on a council estate in Leicester. Wonderfully funny and entertaining from start to finish.
����� Five Star Choice �����
Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years - Last we checked in with Adrian Mole, he was still growing up, enduring all the trials of adolescence. Now, Sue Townsend's marquee character is 30-and-a-quarter, and while the surroundings and circumstances are slightly different, his attitude is still curious and Pauline is still on his mind. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years finds Adrian with all sorts of new worries and questions entropically darting about his mind in a deft attempt to maintain his neuroses. Why won't the BBC produce "The White Van," his serial killer comedy? Will the dome be finished in time? Will he find the fulfillment he seeks as celebrity offal chef, single parent and celibate novelist? A searing, hilarious return for one of England's greatest diarists and, by his own admission, greatest undiscovered literary talents. Be there at the start of Blair's Britain, seen through the eyes of A.A. Mole.
In the latest installment of this bestselling saga, our hapless hero is now separated from his exotic and accomplished Nigerian wife (did he really think that could last?). He still pines for his first and only true love, Pandora Braithwaite, now a Labour M.P., and works as the cook at a smart London restaurant, Hoi Polloi, which specializes in repulsive working�class food. A chance for a television series, Offaly Good!, is promising�at first. But Adrian is once again disappointed. Still, there is the possibility of a career writing cookbooks. As his true confessions demonstrate, Adrian is making some progress. He is now a single father and determined to make things good for his three�year�old son. When, to his surprise, he finds that he has another son as well�an updated version of the Master Mole we have come to know and love�he takes responsibility for this boy, too. Life continues to take him aback, but Adrian is finally beginning to cope.
Extract: It's 1 May 1997. Now a celebrity offal chef at the Hoi Polloi restaurant, Soho (and still an unpublished novelist), Mole has returned to the Midlands to cast his vote for the ravishing and Chanel-suited Labour Party candidate, Dr Pandora Braithwaite, the love of his young life. Back in Leicester, everyone in the Mole household expects Tony Blair's election to bring them wealth, fulfilment and personal happiness. For 17 Wisteria Walk is a seething mass of late twentieth-century angst: Pauline Mole, Mother, 53, feels she has wasted her life; no letters after her name and only a 'Mrs' in front of it. Would an extramarital affair with Ivan Braithwaite (55, ripe for the cull) lift her millennial gloom? George Mole, Father, 50, out of a job, plagued by piles but scared of the operation. Also having a problem with his erectile function and is finding it difficult to get out of bed to vote. Rosie Mole, Sister, 15-year-old teenage vamp; Adrian suspects she may have Tourette's syndrome. Glenn Bott, Juvenile Stalker, 12. Adrian's love child? Or is Barry Kent his dad? New Dog, age unknown, disappointing substitute for the Old Dog, who died after a long and record-breaking veterinary experience.
����� Four Star Choice ����
The Queen and I - The Queen and her family are deposed by a new Republican Government and allocated housing on a Leicester Council Estate. The Queen's husband takes his redundancy badly, her beautiful daughter-in-law copes bravely with the problems of bringing up two young lads alone in difficult circumstances while her sister reaches an understanding with criminal elements on the estate. The Royal Family come to terms with their new situation in a series of hilarious scenes as Sue Townsend's satire, based on her best-selling novel, explores the broken promises of the Welfare State.
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Adrian Mole: - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 and its sequel, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole were both number one bestsellers and made Sue Townsend the bestselling novelist of the 1980s. In 1991 came a third volume: Adrian Mole from Minor to Major, and then in 1993 Adrian Mole - The Wilderness Years. Together the Mole diaries have sold over 8 million copies, have been adapted for radio, television, theatre and been translated into 34 languages.
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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - Adrian Mole faces the same agonies which life sets before most adolescents: troubles with girls, school, parents, and an uncaring world. The difference though between young Master Mole and his peers is that this Leicester lad keeps a diary - an earnest chronicle of longing and disaster that has convulsed more than five million readers since its two-volume initial publication. From teenage Adrian's obsession with intellectuality after understanding "nearly every word" of a Malcolm Muggeridge broadcast to his anguished adoration of a lovely, mercurial schoolmate, from his view of his parents' constantly creaking relationship to his heartfelt but hilarious attempts at cathartic verse, here is an outrageous triumph of deadpan and deadly accurate, satire. ABBA, Princess Di's wedding, street punks, Monty Python, the Falklands campaign - all the cultural pageantry of a keenly observed era marches past the unique perspective of Sue Townsend's creation: A. Mole, the unforgettable lad whose self-absorption only gets funnier as his life becomes more desperate.
In his diary, adolescent Adrian records the triumphs and tragedies of everyday life with unconsciously wry humour. Episodes from the diary, peopled with characters from Adrian's school, home and neighbourhood, are brought to life. Adrian is dogged by disaster - his mother runs off with the man next door and his father seeks comfort with a woman of doubtful reputation. Even his minor triumphs are tinged with disappointment. Bert Baxter, to whom he is assigned as a 'Good Samaritan' is not a nice old age pensioner and the delectable Pandora, once she is his, has no intention of being a submissive and adoring helpmate. Yet in the end, as Georgie and Paulie, Bert and Queenie and others affirm, life can be worthwhile, if we want it to be, and Adrian will keep on writing poetry, however atrocious the results.
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Rebuilding Coventry - This book begins with protagonist Coventry Dakin committing a murder. She brings an Action Man doll down on the head of a neighbor when she spots him attempting to strangle his wife in a drunken rage. She immediately flees to London, abandoning her husband and children. . . . The life of homelessness and utter poverty she leads in the subsequent week is the focus of this novel. She sleeps in doorways, grovels for food, and even prostitutes herself before settling in with the flamboyant Dodo in Cardboard City.
Sue Townsend is just irresistibly funny, and in Coventry she has found the perfect character through which to express not only her humorous view of the human condition, but also her perceptions of contemporary Britain. The characters are sketched in with a sure hand. There are a professor of forensics and his psychiatrist wife, the Willoughby D'Esterbys, with their non-existent housekeeping and a mad hermit son - all wonderfully funny examples of the hopeless impracticability of high-flown theories of behavior, comfortably cocooned in the intellectual meritocracy. There is also, and by no means incidentally, a quietly poignant dramatisation of what it is like to be a woman alone, dirty and hungry, in London. . . . This is satire in the best, Jonsonian tradition with nothing and no one spared. Anne Smith - New Statesman & Society.
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Ghost Children - She hadn't the heart to tell him she had done away with his baby. She had not wanted to commit herself. He worked with his hands, on a bench instead of a desk. He was Mr. Wrong. And yet she loved him. Seventeen years later he reappears. It unnerves her. Does he love her still? Does he hate her? They are middle-aged, they've lost their looks (he has lost his job). But they remember vividly how rapturous it was between them.
[Lynda Page] [Sue Townsend] [Julian Barnes] [Max Wade-Matthews] [Clive Collins]
[Jane Adams] [Patricia Wendorf] [Joe Orton] [Colin Wilson] [John Thomas Edson]
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