Mole returns (Book review) (National Post, December 18, 1999)

National Post
December 18, 1999

By Sue Townsend

Michael Joseph, 416 pp., $32.99

He's back! Now 30, with baldness and fluctuating penis function

plaguing him instead of acne, Adrian Mole is essentially the same

credulous, self-pitying, fastidious, talent-free, obtuse, yet

lovable pedant from Middle England as ever he was.

The series began in 1982 with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged

13 3/4, followed by The Growing Pains, From Minor to Major and The

Wilderness Years. With sales of over eight million in 34 languages,

the Mole oeuvre is the acknowledged Ur-site of comedic family

dysfunction and political incorrectness.

In The Cappuccino Years, divorced from his Nigerian wife, and

father of William, a three-year old "the colour of dark cappuccino"

in the care of grandparents Pauline and George Mole, Adrian is full

of hope for the New Labour dawn. As the story begins, Adrian, living

in a storage room, is "head" chef at Hoi Polloi, a successful but

hygiene-challenged Soho restaurant owned by the unspeakable,

alcoholic, Peter Savage. It features an offal-based menu adapted

from A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes (1852). My

favourites: "scrag end of lamb," "damp Yorkshire pudding,"

"economical soup for the Poor" and "spotted dick a la Clinton."

Childhood friend Pandora Braithwaite, still the object of Adrian's

yearning, is on the New Labour ticket back home in Leicester. Adrian

joins his mom, frisky with menopausal aggression, to help make

Pandora one of Blair's Babes by shuttling in old-age pensioners

(OAPs) to vote. George Mole stays in bed, depressed by persisting

impotence ("Don't make me have those injections in my dick,

Pauline!").

A love-hate relationship with OAPs dominates Adrian's life. His

wife once said, "You were born old, Adrian," and his present to

himself on his 30th birthday is a subscription to The Oldie.

Adrian's initial encounter with OAP Archie Tait alone makes this

novel prizeworthy. "Are pensioners my albatross? Am I destined to

voyage through life with their liver-spotted hands circling my

neck?" Yet -- his curse and his salvation -- he feels responsible

for them, cantankerous and unappealing as they are, leading to an

involuntary act of kindness to the lonely Tait that repays him in a

surprising but convincing way.

The richly comic and comfortably formulaic plot of The Cappuccino

Years ticks over like a newly serviced Lexus. Adrian is hired to

host a faddy TV cooking show, Offally Good!, by the producer's own

admission a "show for losers." Pauline Mole and Pandora's father

Ivan Braithwaite fall noisily in lust, George gets his mojo back

with Tania Braithwaite. Revolted, Adrian renounces carnality in

homage to celebrity-celibate Stephen Fry, then hears Fry is back

into sex. Commissioned to write Offally Good: The Book, Adrian

suffers immediate writer's block. DNA tests prove him to be the

father of 12-year old Glenn, fruit of a fling with slatternly Sharon

Bott. He moves back to Wisteria Walk to take up his parental

responsibilities, and is routinely dissed by William's daycare

teacher. His addiction to Opal Fruits causes pyorrhea.

Every humiliation for Adrian is an opportunity for staunchly Old

Labour author Townsend to expose the underside of image-obsessed

Tony Blair's England. Leaving Soho in the early hours of Election

Day, Adrian confides to his diary, "I was offered heroin, a lesbian

sex show and a stolen Rolex watch within yards of leaving home.

However, it took me half an hour to track down an innocent pack of

Opal Fruits."

Adrian wants Pandora and he wants the fame of his archrival,

ex-skinhead poet Barry Kent ("Kill the rich!/Burn their houses! Be

unpleasant to their spouses!"). Accepting the fact Pandora will

never want him and that he can't write to save himself are the

lessons he must learn.

In the process, the reader is unfortunately overtaxed with Adrian's

execrable writing projects, a domestic sitcom featuring the Royal

Family and a serial-killer comedy. But interest picks up again back

at Wisteria Walk, where the familiar sturm und drang of family

crises keep anguish at the boil. Adrian's blunders add looming

financial disaster to the stew. Despair unites personal and

political fears: "I am only a few short decades away from being

unable to cut my own toenails. Can I trust Mr. Blair? Will the

future National Health Service provide adult Pampers on prescription

...?" Or is New Labour, in Archie Tait's words, like cappuccino, "a

little bit of coffee with a lot of froth on top"?

All is resolved satisfactorily. The Mole family suppresses its

default selfishness and rallies round, while Adrian finally

discovers his special talent. He is a pretty fine dad, and proves it

handily. What's next for this irritating, endearing Everyman?

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Mole returns (Book review) (National Post, December 18, 1999)