The Prostrate Years

Am I turning into one of those middle-aged men who think the country has gone to the dogs and that there has been no decent music since Abba? Hard to believe! Adrian Mole is pushing forty, a beleaguered bookseller looking back through the wistful eyes of an unrecognized intellectual and, admittedly, pretty much of an Everyman. But he's also looking forward, despite a few things: His five-year-old daughter is showing alarming Stalinist traits; his son is fighting the Taliban and he's worried sick; his unfaithful wife is keeping a diary of her own and it's all rather heartbreaking; frequent urination has made him fear trouble "down there;" and his mother is penning a misery memoir that is one gross slog of a lie (born an aristocrat in a Norfolk potato field, indeed!). Then one day he receives a phone call out of the blue from the great and only love his life: Pandora Braithwaite. "Do you think of me?" she asks. Only ever since he was 13¾ . . . Adrian Mole's epic and hilarious chronicle of angst over a quarter century has sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, and been adapted for television and staged as a musical.