Book info

• Title Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
• Author Sue Townsend
• Year 1993
• Genre Humour

Finally given the heave-ho by Pandora, Adrian Mole finds himself in the unenviable situation of living with the love-of-his-life as she goes about shacking up with other men. Worse, as he slides down the employment ladder, from deskbound civil servant in Oxford to part-time washer-upper in Soho, he finds that critical reception for his epic novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, is not quite as he might have hoped. But Adrian is about to discover that extraordinary and wonderful things may blossom even in the wilderness...

Thoughts

Back to the diary format that works so well with Adrian Mole’s thoughts, I enjoyed this book more than the third in the series. With Adrian older now, the subject matter also grows up, so we are talking about adult relationships, trying and failing to get a job, and going on various holidays and trips with or without your significant other.

It’s fun for me to graduate to this older Adrian, as I have previously only read the first two books a handful of times, rather than growing up alongside the main character. That he no longer loves Pandora is an outrage, but also totally understandable.

Even within this book, Adrian adapts and grows and changes, but he remains that stubborn fish-out-of-water that makes this books so interesting.

Rating: 4 / 5