Just found out on the interwebs that Sue Townsend, author of the Adrian Mole books has died after a short illness. She’d struggled for a number of years with diabetes and blindness, but every few years she still managed to finish another instalment in the Adrian Mole series, which I would pounce on and devour the moment it hit the shelves.

It’s sad that she’s passed on, but she has left behind a sizeable backlist of books and plays, and by all accounts was a fantastic presence whenever she got to a book festival or panel. Only wish I’d seen her speak about her writing.

Some of you may remember reading The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 in school. It’s a book crammed to the brim with pubescent awkardness and background social commentary, and it does brilliantly what films like Napoleon Dynamite and TV series like the In-Betweeners later managed to capture on the screen.

But the later books are where all the magic happens. If you never managed to read beyond the first one or two books, do yourself a favour. Hunt the other books down, and enjoy the journey of this poor kid through awkward adolescence into an even more disastrous adult life.

As a character, Adrian grew from an object of pity into a somewhat detestable and pretentious loser, to his eventual redemption. For my buck, the later books are a brilliant study in developing a character. Reading the later books in the series is like a squirming exercise in schadenfreude, and I took great joy in watching Adrian lurch from one disaster to the next.

Sue Townsend’s has left behind quite the legacy, but the most important thing she’s left behind is a character we got to grow with over the years, and I don’t know what more you can ask for as a writer. Poor old Adrian was often a source of comfort, wry tutting, and always the thought “there but for the grace of God goes the Fisch.”

Apparently there was another book in the works, it will be interesting to see if it comes to light. In the current age of self-publishing and aspiring authors embracing every flavour of social media, frustrated author Adrian Mole would have truly come into his own. Lo! The Flat Hills Of My Homeland would have been an amazing 99c special on Smashwords.

RIP Sue Townsend, and thanks for all the stories 🙂