The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾

The acclaim which this book has already won from readers of all ages has assured it a lasting place in the literature of family life.

Adrian Mole is a worrier. The problems of existence hit him hard. Spots, bits of him that won’t seem to keep still, the cracks in his parents’ marriage, all prey heavily on his mind. There are some consolations. A fourteen-year-old feminist, an eighty-nine-year-old chain smoker and his spoilt best friend all help to lift the gloomy introspection of Mole’s moods. Mole believes he is an intellectual. He is certainly a poet. He buys strikingly coloured stationary on which to write his poems and send them to the BBC. He is dogged by ill health as well as by an infuriatingly ever-present pet dog, and by a catalogue of misfortunes familiar to anyone over the age of thirteen.