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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I laughed till I cried.,
By
This review is from: The Adrian Mole Diaries : The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 : The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (Paperback)
People who find out I read a lot sometimes ask, "What's the best book you ever read?" That is a question that's impossible to answer. I might be able to name the best baseball book I ever read or the best Jane Austen novel or the best biography of a political figure or the best historical fiction set in the middle ages or the best teen-age romance. But if anyone ever asks me, "What's the funniest book you ever read?" this one will be my answer.This is the only book I've ever read that made me laugh out loud so hard I cried at the same time. This happened during the scene in which Adrian is contemplating running away and/or committing suicide and feeling exceedingly sorry for himself. I felt at the time it was cruel of me to be laughing over this poor adolescent's pain, but that just made it funnier. I was sitting at the kitchen table at the time, and the other members of the family who passed by thought I was nuts and said so. Everyone's sense of humor is different. I like my humor dry and understated. I can't stand slapstick. I was about forty when I read this. Maybe you have to be old enough to look back on the agonies of adolescence and not give a rat's tail to enjoy this book.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Adrian Mole is ESSENTIAL reading,
This review is from: The Adrian Mole Diaries : The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 : The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (Paperback)
If Charles Shultz's saying "Happiness isn't funny" is true, then this book by definition qualifies as hilarious. Adrian Mole isn't just a teenager with typical adolescent angst; he's smack dab in the middle of Thatcher's Britain, on the wrong side of the tracks. His parents are on the skids, he has neither dress sense, social grace, looks, intelligence, nor wit, but believes himself to be intellectual and artistically gifted. Menaced and robbed by skinheads at school on a daily basis, pining for a middle-class girl on the fast-track to the upper class he'd so desperately want to join... he is the absolute metaphor for a latter 20th century England that is no longer on the cutting edge of anything, and, like a teenager realising subconsciously he has no future, dealing with the reality that it will never live up to its past glory or future expectations. Savagely skewering the class system, granola-crunching intellectuals, adolescence, Thatcherism, and life in the Midlands, Sue Townsend has executed a real stroke of brilliance in making Mole so clueless. As the moron he is, he cannot filter nor embellish the truth that goes on around him, but reports it through his own naive eyes. This lets us see, for example, that his best friend is less than sane with a serious identity crisis, without the psychobabble. These are dark, brutal books and could easily be rewritten as black tragedies... much of the humor comes from a sense of "Dei gratia sum quod sum." Yet they are funnier still for being so. If you are British or British-ex-pat or in a British-inspired country like Canada or Australia, you WILL see people you know in these characters. This really is essential reading.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Adrian Mole... Intellectual Genius,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Adrian Mole Diaries : The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 : The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (Paperback)
[....] Adrian Mole IS no normal 14 year old. Adrian fancies himself to be an "intellectual", something he repeatedly belies in his fanciful, yet absolutely dumb, comments (such as "When Rembrandt painted the Sistine Chapel", etc.) His language is purposely exaggerated to demonstrate his self-image. That being said, I vaguely remember having read this in grade school; it wasn't until a leisurely browse through a discount book store that I chanced upon it again. It seemed warmly familiar, so I bought it. Since then, I read it whenever I feel like a humorous pick-me-up. Adrian's language envelopes the reader and is, oddly, touching. You can't say that you particularly LIKE Adrian all the time; yet somehow you find yourself cheering him on. Adrian continually shows himself to be ignorant yet still manages to feel that he is intellectually superior to others. Additionally, Adrian's self-absorption is juxtaposed perfectly with his "good samaritanship" (Bert Baxter, anyone?). His parents are immoral, lazy, self-centered and just plain impossible, yet Adrian somehow soldiers on, alternately considering himself an object of pity and a shining example of excellence. I'm looking forward to finding out how Adrian grew up (just found out that there's more books on him!). In the meantime, I would recommend this book to anyone with a sense of humor.
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