Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years

The “wickedly satirical, mad, ferociously farcical [and] subversive” angsty Brit of secret diary fame careens into his thirties (Daily Mail).

I expect that by tomorrow I will have embellished the story and given myself a heroic status I do not deserve . . .

Right now the truth is harrowing enough for aging, impotent intellectual Adrian Mole: He’s soon to be divorced; he hasn’t a clue what to do with his semi-stardom as a celebrity chef; his parents have become swingers (with whom is too shocking to go into now); his epic novel is still unpublished; his ex-flame Pandora is running for political office; and his younger sister has rebelled in the most distressingly common ways. But there’s one upside: Adrian’s son has inherited his mother’s unblemished skin.

Is it any wonder that at 34¾ Adrian is still punishingly self-aware and willfully deluded about what he’s endured and what he’s yet to achieve? Struggling somewhere between breakthrough and breakdown, he’s telling his diary everything. The result? Adrian’s fifth Book of Revelation—and it’s “quite possibly, a classic” (Daily Mirror).