A Telegraph Best Book of 2025
'Ingenious' - ????? Telegraph
'Candid and compelling' - Guardian
'Wistful, sad and funny' - Spectator
'Working-class life pinned to the page' - Herald
'Already your future has been planned out. There is not much choice about what to become in the small town where you live . . .'
A bedroom dreamer with a headful of Warhol, Adelle Stripe's formative years were ones of daytime drinking and religious fervour, frustrated mothers and reckless daughters, desire, ambition and the pursuit of creativity. Told through a prism of vintage perfumes, and played out in vivid detail with startling clarity and colour, Base Notes chronicles an unbridled Northern England of the late 20th century already fading from view.
With a keen eye for the absurd, an ear cocked to eavesdropped conversations and a nose that finds perfume wherever it goes, this tragicomic tale of working-class womanhood is no cliched story of redemption or escape, but instead a bleakly funny yet unflinching memoir of dead-end jobs, lost weekends, brief encounters and those wild, forgotten characters who slip through the cracks.
Infused with acerbic observations and unexpected poignancy, Base Notes sees Adelle Stripe boldly laying her lived experience on the page, creating literature from a life less ordinary.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Ingenious. A story of family in all its fractures and complexity... Its symphonic olfactory narration has a sharpness and depth of recollection which remains as vivid as their first experiencing
????? * Telegraph * Candid and compelling * Guardian * Wistful, sad and funny . . . top notes of humour, insouciance and bravery lift the story into art * Suzi Feay, Spectator * Working-class life pinned to the page -- Teddy Jamieson * The Herald * Poignant and grimly hilarious * Dazed * It's got both style and warmth and made me cry. I loved this rock and roll spirit coming out of small town Yorkshire -- Amy Liptrot Deeply evocative -- Wendy Erskine As the whiff of a past love's perfume takes part of me back to a party in 1979, [her] memoir is further proof that through scent time travel is indeed possible for us mortals . . . scratch and sniff Proust -- George Shaw A fragrant and fabulous episodic memoir -- Editor's Choice * The Bookseller * Adelle Stripe locates a seam of universal longing amidst a northern soul's sundry particulars: epic drinking, Morrissey lyrics, embarrassing family, bedsit love, wayward journeys, and the recollected scents and songs of a lifetime's pain, passion and loss -- Rob Doyle This is a beautiful book -- Anna Wood An addictive - frequently devastating - memoir of escape, immolation and reinvention -- Fergal Kinney Deeply personal and strikingly universal * Buzz Magazine *
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 163 mm
Dicke: 27 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-3996-0860-2 (9781399608602)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Adelle Stripe is an author, poet and journalist based in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. Her books include the Sunday Times bestseller Ten Thousand Apologies, and Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, a fictionalised biography inspired by the playwright Andrea Dunbar. She was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, Portico Prize for Literature and Penderyn Music Book Prize. As a journalist, she has contributed to The Quietus, New Statesman, Record Collector and Yorkshire Post. She is a recipient of Manchester University's Anthony Burgess Fellowship.
