Amazon.co.uk Review
Adrian Mole is balding, he's bitter and he's back, this time aged 30¼. Working at the Hoi Polloy restaurant, Soho, where a typical menu includes:
Heinz Tomato Soup,
(with white bread floaters)
Grey Lamb Chops
Boiled Cabbage avec Dan Quayle Potatoes
Dark Brown onion gravy

Spotted Dick à la Clinton
Bird's Eye Custard

Cheddar Cheese, Cream Crackers
Nescafé
After Eight Mint

he is spotted by a cable TV producer and ends up starring in a celebrity chef show celebrating offal. Though he may be older he is certainly no wiser, still passing his time by dreaming of Pandora (now a shining star in Tony Blair's New Government) after his marriage to a Nigerian beauty ends in tatters. But underneath the layers of experience and sophistication, fans of the Mole family will find the same dysfunctional mess that made Adrian's Secret Diary an instant bestseller--his young son is being brought up by his mother in Ashby-de-la- Zouch, his 16-year-old sister leaves home to live with her multiply pierced boyfriend and his father is bed- bound with manic depression. Adrian still makes constant lists of juvenile neuroses and concentrates on his penis activity to an unhealthy extent (it is when it reaches 0/10 he realises something has to be done).
Townsend's trademark acerbic wit is still much in evidence;

Zippo kissed my mother's hand and complimented her on the shirt she was wearing. 'Is it Vivienne Westwood?' he murmered.
'No', she muttered back. 'It's BhS'.
'You clever thing', he crooned.
it is only the frames of reference that have changed. Occasionally verging on the corny ("I arrived at the Brent Cross shopping centre car-park, to find that my car had been towed away five days ago and was in a police compound somewhere in Purley. A £25 cab ride took me to the Purley gates …") true Mole fanatics will forgive Townsend her occasional excesses for the numerous laugh-out-loud moments that punctuate Adrian's existence as he blunders on towards middle age.
Accessible, amusing and appealing, The Cappuccino Years see an Adrian who has survived the Growing Pains; thought better of True Confessions; is out of the Wilderness Years and is facing the only really important question that remains: Is Viagra cheating? --Lucie Naylor --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Synopsis
An accidental celebrity, with a spreading bald patch, despairing of family values, Mole is still worrying: Is Viagra cheating? Why won't the BBC produce "The White Van", his serial killer comedy? Mole, aged 30 1/4, chronicles the closing years of the 20th century with slanderous abandon.

This was a fun read which gave me flashback of reading the first books whilst at High School - and of being allowed up late to watch the programme!!

Now on it''s way to Cyzaki!

This arrived this week while I was away on Guide camp.

Thanks katybean!

Not sure why it a) took me so long to read this one, and b) took me so long to journal it once I'd read it! I read it a couple of months ago and it's been sitting on my bedside table ever since under an ever-growing pile of bedtime reads!

Anyway, 'twas a good book. Not read any of the other Adrian Moles in years, but it was easy to get right back in to it.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Not sure where I'll leave this yet, but it will be somewhere in Southend while I'm running errands today.