Live Brief: Penguin Random House Student Design Award
Chosen book: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
About the author:
- Sue Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946, she sadly died of a stroke in 2014 at 68 years old.
- Despite leaving school at 15 years old, she became one of the most celebrated and loved comic writer, novelist playwright and journalist.
- Her father worked in a jet-engine factory and became a postman when it closed. Her mother worked in the factory canteen.
- Townsend was terrorised by a teacher who, when children had failed to master their lessons, would slap their legs and make them do handstands.
- She could not read until she was 8 years old, her mother taught her with Richmal Crompton's William books (this was where she got her inspiration for Adrian Mole.
- As a chain-smoking teenager, dressed in black, she was fired from a job in a clothes shop for reading Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol in the changing rooms.
- From the age of 14 she was also writing in secret.
- She married a sheet-metal worker at the age of 18, by the age of 22 she had 3 children under five years old.
- Her marriage lasted seven years, when it ended she began working in several part time jobs, she worked at a petrol station, as a receptionist and for Birds Eye foods.
- Colin Broadway, who was to become her second husband and father of her fourth child, Elizabeth. It was he who encouraged her, in 1975, to join a local writers’ group at the Phoenix arts theatre in Leicester.
- There she wrote her first play, Womberang, set in a gynaecology clinic, which won the 1979 Thames Television Playwright award.
What are the main idea(s) explored in the book?
The book is written in the form of a diary, it exudes with humour and leaves readers easily amused. The theme of this confessional novel are problems encountered by the young man in puberty and his transition from childhood to adulthood. Adrian Mole is faced with many dilemmas, feelings, enthusiasms and disappointments while he slowly creates his own identity. Adrian is neurotic, self-obsessed and takes himself far too seriously, yet he is also incredibly endearing and kind-hearted. The novel gained popularity mainly because the image of Adrian is something all of his peers can relate to. Readers will come across problems that they had growing up. But no one will be troubled by them because Adrian described everything in a very fun and humorous way.
What is the main thrust of the narrative? What are the key events and scenes?
- The thirteen years old boy Adrian Mole decided to write a journal and when he saw a TV show from the writer Malcolm Muggeridge he decided to send his poems to him. Adrian thought of himself as an intellectual because he understood every word on the show.
- Adrian was in puberty and had a slight problem with pimples and he was a bit chubby. His parents were always fighting. His family was thrilled when he got a response for his poems.
- Adrian joined a society and started taking care of Bert Baxter, an old 89 years old man. He used to work with horses, and he was a communist. Because of his work, Adrian was allowed to miss one class on Monday, and that was Math.
- A new student came into Adrian’s class, and he fell in love with her. Her name was Pandora Brithwaite. She came from a wealthy family and lived in a beautiful street. Her parents were intellectuals and gave her a horse. Despite everything she rather entertained herself with Adrian’s friend Nigel.
- Soon Adrian’s mum got a job, and at the same time, she started having an affair with their neighbor Lucas. His parents found a lawyer and decided to get a divorce. Adrian never mentioned that they got divorced, but we can believe they did since his mother moved to Sheffield with Lucas.
- Adrian got a job as a paper delivery boy to earn his allowance. Half of everything he earned went to a bully named Barry Kent who was his classmate. His father tried everything to protect him, but nothing worked. Adrian got beat up by Barry. In the end, his grandmother interferes, and she was successful at solving the problem. Barry had to give all of the money back.
- Pandora suggested to Adrian that they could start up a magazine. Adrian used it to write an article named “The truth about Barry Kent”. The magazine never became famous because Barry Kent bought the only copy of it.
- By the end of the year, his mother broke up with Lucas and came home. His father was thrilled. Adrian described it as a déjà-vu.
- Soon there was a meeting of a club where Pandora was with Barbara Boyer. She was very attractive women whose thoughts about disarming NATO were not in line with Pandora’s. Adrian couldn’t resist Barbara, and they got into a relationship. She didn’t want to hurt Pandora, so she ended it.
- Adrian confessed to Nigel that he was with Barbara and he spread it all around school. Pandora heard the news, so she decided to ignore the fact that Adrian’s birthday was coming.
- After that, he called Pandora, and she forgave him for cheating on her. He was hoping that she will arrive at the hospital any time now and as he was waiting, he realized that the only thing that could save him from going insane was love.
- While he was writing the journal he wasn’t only writing about his life and family. We can also lear a lot about the situation in England and the life of the migrants. He was describing the relation between the races and important events such as the weeding of Charles and Diana.
What is the context (socio-historical, cultural, established school of thought/paradigm) that the book was written in?
From Adrian’s writing, we can learn a lot about how a middle-class family lived in England, in the 1980s. He touched an unemployment, family disintegration, and economic uncertainty. Her satirical social commentary is dry and witty, revealing her incredibly sharp and perceptive eye for detail through Adrian’s acute observations. It also offers a revealing and compassionate picture of the way in which socio-political matters affect the lives and mindsets of the ordinary person and the ordinary family. The early books therefore combine the fairly timeless issues of adolescent ups and downs with a telling commentary on Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s, while the later works apply the same sharp satirical eye to New Labour in the 1990s and early twenty-first century, intertwined with Adrian’s worries about marriage, divorce, parenthood and career.
What is the genre?
Considered Young Adult's Fiction
10 adjectives to describe the book:
- Protagonist
- Complex
- Working-class
- Chaotic
- Reflective
- Honest
- Problematic
- Humorous
- Contemporary
- Contextual
No comments:
Post a Comment