ADRIAN MOLE: THE PROSTRATE YEARS

Mark Hadfield sounds exactly as fans would expect Adrian Mole to sound —always admirable, somewhat befuddled, often amused, and frequently amazed. Adrian’s still writing letters to Gordon Brown and Trevor Nunn, his second wife hates living in the Piggery, and he’s still in love with Pandora Braithwaite, a junior minister in the Foreign Office. In this episode we follow Adrian through his diagnosis ("No, it won't be my prostate. I'm only thirty-nine-and-a-half!") and treatment for prostate cancer, from radiation through chemo. Hadfield keeps Adrian real, stunned by the dismal truth, yet never self-pitying. The combination of Hadfield’s understated reading and Townsend’s unsentimental story offers a listening experience that deals head-on with a life-shattering event and finds resilience and humor in the human condition. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2010]