Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran
'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAY
The hilarious SEVENTH BOOK in Sue Townsend's bestselling series, sees Adrian fall in love, be inconvenienced by the war and face his new nemesis: a swan from the local canal . . .
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Wednesday April 2nd
My birthday.
I am thirty-five today. I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death.
Adrian Mole is middle-aged but still scribbling.
Working as a bookseller and living in Leicester's Rat Wharf; finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair; locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud; measuring his expanding bald spot; and trying to win-over the voluptuous Daisy . . .
Adrian yearns for a better more meaningful world. But he's not ready to surrender his pen yet...
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'Hilarious. Deft, gleeful mockery impales modish fads, from home make-overs to new-age crazes, while fiercer irony is trained on the country's involvement with Iraq' Sunday Times
'Richly comic ... stuffed full of humour, tragedy, vanity, pathos and, very occasionally, wisdom' Guardian
'Completely hilarious, laugh-out-loud, a joy' Daily Mirror
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This fifth installment of Adrian Mole's diary (The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4; Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, etc.) breaks new ground with its concern for current affairs and its sympathetic treatment of not-always-exemplary characters. Adrian, as usual, is struggling with various relationships and with constant financial problems, always trying to do the right thing, but usually giving in to his baser urges, in love and in spending. He becomes accidentally engaged to dollhouse-building homebody Marigold while spending flirtatious evenings with childhood love Pandora; fires off missives to the likes of Tony Blair and Tim Henman; and works, genuinely, to be a good father, friend and ex-husband to a cast of often bizarre but always human characters. Townsend, author of numerous non-Adrian novels, plays and nonfiction, makes Adrian's adult disorientation palpable as he tries to figure out how he went from hosting a popular television show to working in a failing second-hand bookshop, and copes with the shock of seeing childhood bullies make good and childhood dreams go awry. Arguments about the war figure prominently: one of Adrian's sons is sent to Iraq; his best friend, Robert, is there, too. Adrian's reactions to the war are complex, funny and wrenching. By the time the diary breaks off (on Sunday, July 22, 2004), things are looking up for Adrian and a bridesmaid and he is considering (to her consternation) writing an autobiography.
Customer Reviews
Brilliant
I read this book a while ago and I couldn't stop laughing! It has up and down moments but you just have to laugh.
Another brilliant Sue Townsend book. Absolutely brilliant!!!
Outstanding
Possibly the best of Adrian's diaries - laugh out loud funny, poignant and genuinely sad, often at the same time.
Sue Townsend is genius for creating such a flawed, myopic and insular character and turning him into the nation's favourite fictional diarist.