Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years (1993) - Plot & Excerpts
In this book, I both identified wit the character, and loved to hate him. The book is written in first person, in the form of a diary and tells the story of Adrian Mole, a completely unsuccesful 24 year old, who is horribly analitic and thinks that he's awfully tallented while he is writing the worst novel in the world.He is really scary and creepy, something about the way he views things and reacts to people is almost autistic and it crept me out. It gave the whole book a sort of macabric humour.I started the book and finished it in one sitting, even though it wasn't that interesting, it just flows so.He sort of shwed me how I DON'T want to be.Nice, no more than that. Funny every once in a while.בספר הזה, גם הזדהיתי עם הגיבור, וגם אהבתי לשנוא אותו. הספר כתוב בגוף ראשון, בדמות יומן ומספר על חייו של אדריאן מול, בן 24 לא מוצלח בעליל, אנאלי עד מוות, שחושב שהוא מוכשר בזמן שהוא כותב את הנובלה הכי מזעזעת בעולם.הוא מפחיד נורא. למרות שהוא לא באמת כ"כ נורא, זה פשוט משהו בתפיסת העולם שלו שקשה לי להגדיר, מעין אוטיסטיות שכזו שנותנת לכל הספר הומור מעט מקאברי.התחלתי את הספר וסיימתי אותו באותה קריאה, אפילו שהוא לא היה כ"כ מרתק, הוא פשוט זורם.הוא הראה לי איך אני לא רוצה להיות.נחמד, לא יותר. מצחיק מדי פעם, יש יציאות טובות.4.3.07
As I mentioned in my review of the first novel in this series, I love these books. I absolutely adore them.That aside, I warn anybody who has read the first three and is about to delve into this one - aside from its humor, this is where the series gets more grown up and a little more realistic in Adrian's tragedies. On reading bits of it again this weekend I actually found it saddening more than funny - but that shouldn't put anybody off because I've read it several times and it's a funny, funny book. Adrian's obscene poetry to Pandora at the beginning of the book are so funny that for a while I wanted to call my band "Adrian's Poetry".As per usual, the cultural references went over my head a little bit (I'm sixteen and Irish, so British modern history and politics aren't in my radar) but I do recall Adrian mentioning Freddie Mercury in October of 1991 (hmm...) so it is jammers with funny (or in the case of that one, unfortunate) cultural references, for all of you adults who are more read-up on that sort of thing or perhaps lived through it! It's not my favourite installment - not by a long shot. But it is a good book, and a book that nobody would regret reading.
What do You think about Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years (1993)?
People have said here that they were fascinated and repulsed by the character, and wanted to avoid being like him at all costs. Well guess what, there are people like Adrian Mole out there, and I'm one of them--so close in fact that this book stopped being funny when I realised as I read on that I am becoming exactly like him ... or he is becoming exactly like me. Well, at least until I got to the part where someone called the novel he is working on, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, a parody. After that I had giggling fits every time a new passage from Flat Hills appeared, and in fact often when Adrian was just narrating his own life.I'm turning 25 by the end of this year. Maybe I'll have a chance to let go of my own baggage and emerge a new man by then. A writing trip to Faxos sounds nice.
—Yawar
Adrian Mole stavolta non delude e con un tuffo nel 1991 (quando Bush padre vomitò sull'ambasciatore giapponese) torna a farmi ridere come un tempo. Archiviato il terzo libro che è penoso, questa quarta parte (su 8) del diario di uno dei più illusi scrittori wannabe del panorama letterario è notevole, non tanto per la sua storia, ma per quanto questa entri a fare parte del suo romanzo, ogni volta che qualcuno gli mette i bastoni tra le ruote, Adrian lo fa uccidere virtualmente dal suo alter-ego letterario. Ritroviamo la solita Pandora (insopportabile), la cougar madre con il nuovo giovane marito e il padre con la sgallettata di turno. Mi rendo conto che è una saga dello stereotipo, però a me Adrian Mole fa ridere da più di 20 anni e non posso farci niente....
—GONZA
At this point in the diaries Adrian is 24 and one day old. Pandora has finally tired of him so he fixates on her therapist friend Leonora Dewitt.After Pandora throws him out and trying various means of avoiding it he ends up back at his parents for a while.His parents have split up and his father is with the tyrannical Belinda Bellingham while his mother has taken up with one of her lodgers, Martin Muffett.He eventually gives up lusting after Leonora and starts a relationship with Bianca who works in the newsagents.But even with this relationship nothing is smooth for Adrian and trials and tribulations abound and amidst all this he has to deal with the death of Grandma Mole.Brilliant and in the same tradition as the earlier novels only with a slightly more grown up Adrian Mole at the centre of all the action.
—Ria
