The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾

Adrian Mole is thirteen and three quarters, living in the English Midlands in 1981, and convinced he is an unrecognised intellectual. Over a year of diary entries he records his spots, his parents' crumbling marriage, his hopeless love for the new girl Pandora Braithwaite, his dealings with the school bully and his friendship with the cantankerous pensioner Bert Baxter.

Sue Townsend's first Adrian Mole book is written entirely in his voice, and much of its comedy comes from the gap between what Adrian writes and what the reader can see. It began a series that followed him into adulthood.