The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole(1984)

Sue TownsendCaroline Holden

Adrian Mole faces the same agonies which life sets before most adolescents: troubles with girls, school, parents, and an uncaring world. The difference, though, between young Master Mole and his peers is that this British lad keeps a diary -- an earnest chronicle of longing and disaster.

From Adrian's obsession with intellectuality after understanding "nearly every word" of a Malcolm Muggeridge broadcast to his anguished adoration of a lovely, mercurial schoolmate, from his view of his parents' constantly creaking relationship to his heartfelt but hilarious attempts at cathartic verse, here is a triumph of deadpan satire.

ABBA, Princess Di's wedding, street punks, Monty Python, the Falklands campaign -- all the cultural pageantry of a keenly observed era marches past the unique perspective of A. Mole, the unforgettable lad whose self-absorption only gets funnier as his life becomes more desperate.