Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years

by Sue Townsend Narrated by Adrian Gray

Overview

Celebrate Adrian Mole's 50th Birthday with this new edition of the FIFTH BOOK in his diaries, where Adrian faces divorce, fatherhood and (short-lived) television stardom . . .

Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father.

His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?).

And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him.

Frustrated, disappointed and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything . . .

'With the Mole books, Townsend has an unrivalled claim to be this country's foremost practising comic novelist' MAIL ON SUNDAY

'Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation. Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself' THE TIMES

'One of the greatest comic creations. I can't remember a more relentlessly funny book' DAILY MIRROR

'Three cheers for Mole's chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family. We need him' EVENING STANDARD

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Townsend's hilarious, uniquely British creation, Adrian Mole, first appeared on the literary scene as a spotty teenager in 1982 with the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13U. Mole has become a lovable, frustrated intellectual whose misguided introspectiveness and rash impulsiveness keep him on a cycle of failure and rebound. In this amusing sixth book in the series, Adrian, now 30, is divorced and the father of two sons (William, almost three years old, and Glenn, 12). His good friends are still around: old flame Pandora "we adore ya" Braithwaite has been elected a Labour MP by capitalizing on her short, tight skirts to win votes; best friend Nigel is trying to figure out how to tell his family he's gay. To Adrian's horror, his parents swap partners with Pandora's parents--and his dad discovers Viagra. Despite his ineptitude at cooking, Adrian works as the head chef at a snooty restaurant called Hoi Polloi, which specializes in "execrable nursery food." It is typical of Townsend's humor that characters are feted for what they are not (Adrian--temporarily--gets his own cooking show, "Offally Good!") and unacknowledged for what they are (no one recognizes Adrian's responsible honesty as a father). Throughout, Townsend's lively prose sparkles, giving life to the myriad trivial events of Adrian's day. Adrian makes the inevitable comparison to Bridget Jones: "The woman is obsessed with herself!... She writes as though she were the only person in the world to have problems." Mole composes a brief letter to Jones, asking if she has any advice for getting his diaries published. It's a good thing for readers that Townsend figured out how to do that a long time ago. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

On the eve of Tony Blair's election, Adrian Mole discovers that he is losing his hair. And so begins the latest installment in the "Adrian Mole" saga, which began with the popular and entertaining The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 133/4, published here in 1984. Now in his "cappucino years," Adrian is a single father and chef who struggles financially. His personal life continues to be complicated by his dysfunctional family, his still unrequited love for Pandora Braithwaite, and the revelation that he is father to not one but two sons. Pandora compares Adrian's life to a "situation comedy," and Townsend tries to ring humor from Adrian's failure in his various roles, which include husband, son, and writer. It is not until the end of the book that he finds some redemption in his role as father. And therein lies the greatest single flaw in this book--the teenage angst that was so funny in the younger Adrian wears thin in a man in his 30s who whines about his struggles to define himself as an adult. This is sure to be requested by loyal Mole fans, but its appeal to new readers will be limited.--Caroline M. Hallsworth, Sudbury P.L., Ontario Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

School Library Journal

Townsend's hilarious, uniquely British creation, Adrian Mole, first appeared on the literary scene as a spotty teenager in 1982 with the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13U. Mole has become a lovable, frustrated intellectual whose misguided introspectiveness and rash impulsiveness keep him on a cycle of failure and rebound. In this amusing sixth book in the series, Adrian, now 30, is divorced and the father of two sons (William, almost three years old, and Glenn, 12). His good friends are still around: old flame Pandora "we adore ya" Braithwaite has been elected a Labour MP by capitalizing on her short, tight skirts to win votes; best friend Nigel is trying to figure out how to tell his family he's gay. To Adrian's horror, his parents swap partners with Pandora's parents--and his dad discovers Viagra. Despite his ineptitude at cooking, Adrian works as the head chef at a snooty restaurant called Hoi Polloi, which specializes in "execrable nursery food." It is typical of Townsend's humor that characters are feted for what they are not (Adrian--temporarily--gets his own cooking show, "Offally Good!") and unacknowledged for what they are (no one recognizes Adrian's responsible honesty as a father). Throughout, Townsend's lively prose sparkles, giving life to the myriad trivial events of Adrian's day. Adrian makes the inevitable comparison to Bridget Jones: "The woman is obsessed with herself!... She writes as though she were the only person in the world to have problems." Mole composes a brief letter to Jones, asking if she has any advice for getting his diaries published. It's a good thing for readers that Townsend figured out how to do that a long time ago. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

ForeWord Magazine

Even if truth is stranger than fiction, Townsend has been giving truth a run for its money in the person of Adrian Mole, her fictitious English diarist whose life and predicaments were nicely captured in his self-description from an earlier book: "I have a problem. I'm an intellectual, but at the same time I'm not very clever."

He's an odd duck, hapless one moment, insightful the next, and lovable most of the time. The world he chronicles in his diaries is much like that of common man except the spotlight is on the more absurd qualities of contemporary parenthood, politics, personal relations, and media.

This is Townsend's sixth book in the Mole series. It was released last year in Great Britain, where Mole has a large following. The Mole diaries have sold millions of copies and have been adapted for radio, television, and the stage. Townsend's other novels include Rebuilding Coventry (1988), The Queen and I (1992), and Ghost Children (1998).

The earlier diaries chronicled Mole's years from adolescence to young adulthood. Those were the Margaret Thatcher years, when kids at Mole's school were nearly expelled for wearing red socks. In The Cappuccino Years, Mole is thirty years old and despite the literary aspirations of his youth he is making a precarious living as a chef. Tony Blair is ascendant, and some of Mole's acquaintances expect pound notes to start falling from heaven at any moment.

As a schoolboy, Mole pined for Pandora Braithwaite, and he's still pining for her as she stands for election to Parliament, where she intends to be the "brightest star in Blair's firmament." Mole's parents are still playing sexual mix and match games, in this case with Pandora's parents.Some things have changed. Now there are stores that sell shoes guaranteed to earn respect at school for Mole's newly discovered illegitimate son. The price is exhorbitant, and Mole balks at paying it, but eventually he does. In the image-conscious 1990s, it would be cruel to send a kid to school in the wrong shoes.

Mole no longer writes solemn poetry of his youth, but he does write screenplays, which meet with the same indifference as did his poetry.

Virtually plotless, written with humor that runs the gamut from potty jokes to sly political commentary, the latest installment of Mole's life reveals a man who is at once repelled by and attracted to the self-indulgent, media-fixated culture of 1990s middle-class London. He wants his fifteen minutes of fame but he can't abide the superficiality and sheer wrong-headedness of the television producers who can offer it to him. "I feel alone in a parallel universe," he writes.

Then, through several strange twists of fate, he becomes a television celebrity. It doesn't change anything, because everybody promptly ignores him.

Sally Eckhoff

Adrian's favorite drink in these ''cappuccino years,'' according to a socialist neighbor, is nothing but ''a little bit of coffee and a bloody lot of froth.'' You might say the same of this book, with the understanding that froth is a wonderful invention -- something no comic novelist should be without.
—New York Times Book Review

OCT/NOV 00 - AudioFile

Are American fans of the fictional diarist Bridget Jones aware of her literary ancestor, Adrian Mole? They might like to meet him! Adrian’s first diary came out in 1982, when he was entering his angst-ridden teen years as a middle-class Brit. This volume finds Adrian a cook (specialty: offal!) and a single father, suffering writer’s block, and still pining for the heartless Pandora. The crises are suitably ridiculous, the social satire inimitable. Daintry has an attractive voice, and his reading captures Adrian’s befuddlement, anguish, and self-delusion with precision, although the long pauses between sentences often disrupt the flow. Like many sequels, THE CAPUCCINO YEARS is even funnier for those who have read earlier Mole diaries. S.P. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192269534
Publisher:	W. F. Howes Ltd
Publication date:	07/18/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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