Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty But all is not well The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure and the spark has fizzled out of his marriage And Adrian's nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent As his troubles multiply, a drunken call to old flame Dr Pandora Braithwaite awakens memories of what might have been and causes Adrian to wonder is Pandora the only one who can possibly save him?