Base Notes
A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
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 clichéd 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.
Press Quotes
'A fragrant and fabulous episodic memoir' — Editor's Choice, The Bookseller
'Stripe's ingenious memoir-in-perfumes uses different scents to recall her life's landmarks - the adolescent pursuit of thinness, the aftermath of abortion, the hospital where her mother lay dying. It's just as affecting and strange as you'd expect.' — ★★★★★ Telegraph Nonfiction Books of the Year
'Candid and compelling' — Guardian
'A fine memoir... It’s the north of the 1980s that Stripe, a great noticer of telling details, perfectly captures' — TLS
'Poignant and grimly hilarious' — DAZED
'Wistful, sad and funny ... top notes of humour, insouciance and bravery lift the story into art' — Spectator
"Working-class life pinned to the page" — Herald
Available in hardback, paperback and ebook format
Audiobook narrated by Christine Bottomley for Audible
Published: 13 February 2025 (White Rabbit / Orion)
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781399608602 / 9781399608626
To buy a copy visit Waterstones, Foyles, Bookshop.Org, Topping & Co or your local independent bookseller (such as The Book Corner, Salt's Mill, or Forum etc)