Base Notes

The Scents of a Life

By: Adelle Stripe

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Paperback | 12 February 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9

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A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR - Told with warmth, wit and unflinching humour, BASE NOTES shares an alternative confessional of Northern working-class life in the 1980s

'Candid and compelling' GUARDIAN

'Deeply evocative' Wendy Erskine

'A small, bleak masterpiece' Chris Power, OBSERVER

'Poignant and grimly hilarious' DAZED

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, predacious strangers and punk rock energy. Snapshots of wild abandon and dead-end jobs pepper this evocative tale of metamorphosis alongside a wry clear-eyed account of maternal conflict, compassion and, ultimately, acceptance.

Told through a prism of vintage perfumes, Base Notes is a poetic, poignant and bleakly comic chronicle of one woman's coming of age in Northern England, an alternative confessional of working-class life in the closing years of the late twentieth century.

Industry Reviews

Candid and compelling - Guardian

It's got both style and warmth and made me cry. I loved this rock and roll spirit coming out of small town Yorkshire

Ingenious. A story of family in all its fractures and complexity - Telegraph ?????

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

Wistful, sad and funny - Spectator

Poignant and grimly hilarious - Dazed

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