
Base Notes
The Scents of a Life
$55.41
- Hardcover
288 pages
- Release Date
13 May 2025
Summary
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 …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781399608602 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1399608606 |
| Author: | Adelle Stripe |
| Publisher: | Orion Publishing Co |
| Imprint: | White Rabbit |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 288 |
| Release Date: | 13 May 2025 |
| Weight: | 460g |
| Dimensions: | 30mm x 158mm x 224mm |

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Critics Review
A small, bleak masterpiece … the writing is immaculate * Chris Power, Observer *
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
★★★★★
Candid and compelling * Guardian *
It’s the north of the 1980s that Stripe, a great noticer of telling details, perfectly captures * TLS *
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 *
Adelle Stripe
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.
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