Paperback of the Week in The Observer
- 6 hours ago
- 1 min read
Base Notes is Paperback of the Week in the Observer, where it has been reviewed by Chris Power...
'Adelle Stripe grew up on what she calls the boring side of the Pennines, in the brewery town of Tadcaster, where “the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth”. Her mum was a hairdresser who regularly took part in competitions, making Stripe one of the “lost children of hairdressing, those who wander between towns and cities on the ‘circuit’”. Her father was a cowman, who in a memorable scene enlists his teenage daughter’s help in delivering an oversized calf. “What if we can’t get it out?” Stripe asks him. “What happens then?”
Such moments of drama define Base Notes, which is the opposite of a leisurely tour through a life. Stripe focuses on contained episodes, skipping across the years like a powerfully skimmed stone. What she elects to share with us nearly always feels vital, whether it’s an ice-skating outing with her mother, a wake in the pub where she works, or a disastrous TV appearance. The chapter describing her work for a chatline – ubiquitous in post-pub ad breaks in the 1990s – is a small, bleak masterpiece.
Stripe was a dreamy, solitary child who liked “creating scenarios in the Sindy house, reading Brothers Grimm fairy tales or listening to records with a pair of headphones on. It rarely involved anybody else.” As a description of how a novelist, poet or music writer might be formed (Stripe is all three), this couldn’t be bettered...'
