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I found this in a charity shop in Newcastle and grabbed it. Finding this book on the cheap has been a mission of mine for years and I had no success until last week. I have a feeling Adrian would be proud of me!
I was a bit nervous about reading this after last reading it when I was 11. 1/4 but over 30 years later I enjoyed it FAR more. Every page was funny and even funnier as an adult and even funnier because this is my generation and my youth. A nostalgic, bitter sweet and hilarious read. I loved it!
Adrian is so naive. He writes things literally without any idea of what's going on. His parents splitting up, them arguing about who ISN'T going to get custody of Adrian. it all seems to leave Adrian unaffected. He is a misunderstood intellectual (who admits he isn't very clever.) All he wants to do is marry pandora and get a few of his poems published.
I love the bit when his Mum and creepy Mr Lucas from next door are locked in the kitchen supposedly doing DIY and Mr. Lucas tells Adrian he can't come in because the boiler is at a crucial point and his Mum has her hands full.
I love how Adrian starts reading War and Peace on a Saturday and finishes it in 1day saying it was quite good.
I love how he thinks his spots are because his parents feed him unhealthy food and because school dinners are crap. He believes that crap school dinners are a strategy of Margaret Thatcher's to keep the young people mentally and physically deficient in order that they can't rise up against the government. (Good idea Adrian.)
I love how his Sunday's are so boring. The highlights of the weekend are weekly shops in the supermarket and seeing Pandora. his parents really are under stress. Break up, unemployment and depression. But somehow you love them all; even his hard up, unemployed Dadand his Mother, who is a new convert to the feminist movement. She's learning karate and Adrian is scared that she is going to karate chop his Dad in the wind pipe.
I lovehis 80 year old woodbine smoking communist friend Bert who Adrian befriends only because it enables him to miss maths class every week. Adrian and pandora spend loads of their free time with him and often end up cleaning the filthy house he lives in.
The way his dad jumps out of bed when Adrian tells him that Argentina has invaded the Falklands and we are at war is a classic. Adrian's dad thinks the Falklands are just off Scotland and when Adrian tells him they are over 8000 miles away he just groans and jumps back into bed.
As for getting the airfix glue on his model plane stuck to his nose when attempting a bit of glue sniffing..great.
I think this is a wonderful British Classic and if you haven't read it for a while I recommend it. As for kids of 13 now...I really don't know what they will make of it. Bits of it are generation specific but the humour and honesty haven't dated at all. Plus it will make teenagers today see how kids entertained themselves when there really was no money and nothing to do!
PS. I forgot aboutAdrian's diary entry for the school day trip to the British Museum in London. Brilliant!
PPS. And how Adrian's Dad brings crisps to the hospital for Adrian as a present after Adrian has his tonsils out. Great.
PPPS And Sabre the dog
PPPPS and how his granny beats up the guy who is bullying Adrian.
Enough....I could go on and on.
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