Book #42: Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend
Number of pages: 277
It has been a few years since I last read an Adrian Mole novel, and this is one I'd missed, which came before Cappuccino Years.
This one is set in 1991 and early 1992 and sees Adrian in his early 20s, mostly trying to deal with his love life, sending numerous creepy notes to his childhood sweetheart, Pandora, and attending therapy classes, only to fall in love with his shrink.
Another one of the main plot threads involved Adrian Mole's nemesis Barry Kent writing a book that was a thinly-veiled mockery of Adrian himself, prompting Adrian to attempt to write his own book himself. Adrian's book itself seemed dire - this seemed to be done on purpose - but I found that it resulted in a lot of the book's comedy when the character in the story started writing his own book, resulting in a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, and Sue Townsend took things even further, but in a way that did result in a good payoff.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
At the end, one of Adrian Mole's fictional characters comes up with a book that sounds more promising than Adrian's real-life ideas.
Having read later books in the series, I noticed a few plot threads starting that finally got resolved later in the series, including the character of Glenn Bott. Also, I love the standard format of the novels, which are written as their main character's diary, so you get to read all his random thoughts as well as about his life.
I was glad I picked up this book, but do want to get the other book I missed, The True Confessons of Adrian Albert Mole and the final book in the series, Adrian Mole: The Prostate Years.
Next book: The 7th Function of Language (Laurent Binet)