A brand new Adrian Mole book: a welcome addition to the literary world. The intellectual is back; but not firing on all cylinders. In this book Adrian turns 40 but that's the least of his worries. The normal main characters are there: mother and father, sister, half brother, son Glenn. There are new characters too: Mr Carlton Hayes, Bernard, Hugo Fairfax-Lycett as well as members of the medical profession. Fear not, Pandora is still here, sophisticated and ravishing wife Daisy is here and daughter Gracie.

The story is set just outside the village of Mangold Parva in Leicestershire. Adrian is at home here, his parents are at home here and his daughter is at home here. Daisy is like a fish out of water: she can't stand the place. There is the village pub, the village church and the nearby aristocratic estate.

One constant theme of the book is the play that Adrian is writing, Plague, set in mediaeval England in which Adrian attempts to capture the very essence of the bubonic plague. He does this by means of micro-playlets within a play. What this means is that he chooses a character, often based on someone he's just met in the street or the pub, who has heard about his play and who wants to appear in it. Adrian intends to produce the play in the village hall: the vicar is against it on a variety of grounds including lack of merit. Of course, this has no bearing on Adrian's desire and ability to continue writing. The slivers of the play that we see in the book are usually woeful: badly written, tactless, inaccurate... enough said.

Adrian works in a second-hand bookshop for most of this book and he does so with Mr Carlton Hayes, the man he wishes he could call father. Mr Carlton Hayes is well read, avuncular and a good boss. At home Mr Carlton Hayes lives with someone called Leslie: since Leslie can be both male and female, masculine and feminine, Adrian is not sure whether Leslie is batting for the same team as him! We get the answer to this question later in the book when Adrian is invited back to Mr Carlton Hayes’s home along with other people.

Of course, since Adrian is an intellectual he pours scorn on many of the people who come into the shop. And they mispronounce words, they use words they don't understand, they get titles wrong and there is the joke from earlier diaries concerning the gender of Evelyn Waugh. The shop is not a success and something not so pleasant befalls it. I have partly given the game away there but I'll say no more.

The disturbing part of the story is found in the title: the prostrate years ... for prostrate and read prostate. Adrian begins the book by revealing his need to visit the toilet many times a day and many times a night. Eventually he goes to see his doctor who refers him to a specialist who confirms prostate cancer. I have to give Sue Townsend full credit for making prostate cancer into an enjoyable topic to read about! I imagine that many men who read this book will benefit by being forced to think about this problem since it is a killer and they may feel encouraged to visit their own doctor and beat the cancer because of it.

We are treated throughout the book to Adrian's anal inspections by his doctors ... more than one gloved finger encroaches! We read about his radiotherapy, his chemotherapy and his medical and clinical trials and tribulations.

The sophisticated and ravishing wife daisy is a bit of a slut. She cannot abide living in the village and it is clear from everything Adrian tells us that their marital relations are at rock bottom. Nevertheless for much of Adrian's battle against cancer she is supportive: she goes to the hospital with him, she cuddles him in bed and she seems to forgive him some of his foibles. Very near the beginning of the book however Adrian admits that it has been more than two months since they made love. By the end of the book more than a year has passed during which no body fluids have been exchanged!

More than that, if ever this is made into a film or television programme, Daisy will not pull it off!

Mother Pauline and father George are still at the top of their game and there is the Jeremy Kyle show to take into account: again, I don't want to spoil anything and if I say almost anything I would spoil it! It involves a paternity suit, however.

Son Glenn returns from Afghanistan for a while and dense as he is, he's a good boy who tries to look after his mother in spite of the fact that his mother cannot really look after herself. There is the fight with the no good stepfather who finds it difficult to get out of bed even at three in the afternoon. And there is a return to Afghanistan. We get some good news when we find that Glenn's fiancée is pregnant. Speaking of pregnancy, there is a sort of pregnant pause in the story suggesting that Glenn's fate might hang in the balance.

Finally, this is a very rich book and Adrian's daughter Gracie is a real live wire: she insists on going to school in a mermaid costume, dressed as Cinderella... anything but the school uniform. Unless, of course, grandmother Pauline is the one in charge! There are exchanges between Adrian and the school all of which almost without exception leave Adrian with egg on his face. Daisy does get involved from time to time but not in a meaningful way.

Throughout the book Adrian is a rent with indecision: he cannot tell anyone anything remotely resembling bad news. The Jeremy Kyle show has to be kept secret from his father, his cancer has to be kept secret, he cannot tell his colleagues that the shop is in trouble, he cannot tell Doctor Pearce, who seems to be stalking him, that he doesn't want anything to do with her ... the same old Adrian!

Do I recommend this book? Yes! Unreservedly? Probably! It's certainly a good and easy read, the same as all the Adrian Mole diaries and the story and subplots are all equally engaging. What I notice more than before though, possibly, is that there seem to be more references to politics and public life that are thrown in to make the story more topical, lively, funny. Usually these anecdotes are wide of the mark and are probably used to confirm peoples’ prejudices. Anything to do with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and so on seem fair game. Then again, references to Adrian's cardigan are made in a very funny way. One of my own prejudices is aired on page 71:

After tea Gracie entertained the company with her improvised one woman High School Musical show. She sang, in an appalling American accent, into a pink plastic microphone which amplified her voice.

In this one cameo we see the X factor and Britain's got Talent coming together to show the unfathomable way in which all British singers feel the need to sing as if they are Americans. I am at one with Townsend on this.

Another interesting aspect of modern British life and maybe not just British life that is something that I've noticed more and more and on page 119 we read this:

We left the shop together and for some reason I found myself telling her about my prostate trouble.

In Britain, we make a great play on the confidentiality of the doctor patient relationship and yet this sentence encapsulates the way we actually behave: which is that we go to see the doctor and then we're barely out of the surgery when we begin to tell anyone we meet whatever we want about our ailment, illness, operation and so on. Spot on!

Going back to childhood, I found the following evocative, page 148:

From the school we could hear the ragged sound of small children singing, We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land. One of my favourite hymns when I was a schoolboy

An interesting device that Townsend used was 20: 20 hindsight. For example on page 167 Adrian is made to say:

It is good to know that whatever travails we may suffer in life, Woolworths will always be there.

Dramatic irony isn't it since Woolworth’s closed shortly after Adrian was made to say that! She also mentions Borders bookshops a little bit later on but without the irony since that has only just gone bust which is well beyond the publication this diary.

There is a nice moment in the diary when Adrian is caught lying through his teeth to Doctor Pearce, his erstwhile suitor as he tells her that both his wife and child are ill and he has to dash home to be with them by saying, Yes, they are both very ill with... the name of every illness fled from my brain. I liked that!

I do get irritated by American English in an English English novel such as this one. In this case, on page 226 a policemen is made to say, Can I see your driver's license? I beg everyone in Britain to stop thinking they live in Hollywood: on a British driving licence it says driving licence... D R I V I N G. Fortunately that is one of the very few such cases in the whole of this 400 page diary.

There are a few laugh out loud moments, one of which involves the name Roger Mee. Roger is a customer who comes into the bookshop and as he told Bernard his name Bernard said, Bit of a bum moniker to go through life isn’t? To which Roger replied, I beg your pardon. To shorten the story, it's clear that Roger had never thought about this, no one ever mentioned the verb to Roger. He really was taken aback but was it funny

Similarly funny was the incident, again in the shop, when mother Pauline discusses the fortunes of the shop and at the end of a mini rant she describes the shop in this way: The berries have fallen off the mistletoe and your holly and ivy are as dry as a Nun’s crotch. You can’t better that.

In terms of style, I think I said this in previous reviews, the diaries are more books than diaries as it’s obviously difficult to keep a diary going for 400 pages and keep it entertaining. And secondly, I didn't feel that Adrian is portrayed as quite the intellectual this time: I know battling cancer and dealing with an unresponsive wife together with a psychologically disturbed child are hardly feeding grounds for intellectual superiority but it wasn't the Adrian of old in this respect.

Nevertheless, a good read, good characterisations, plenty of good prejudices to chew on and the end of the book comes with Pandora’s Audi speeding up the drive bouncing over potholes and drawing to a halt outside Adrian's house when Adrian says: I got up and started to walk towards her.

Can't wait!!

Duncan Williamson
19^th December 2009