A lifetime ago, I worked in Selfridges on Oxford Street and to get to the record shop I worked in (hidden like an embarrassing turd at the back of the ground floor) I had to pass through the miasma of the perfume department and it was a heady experience to say the least, but one I absolutely loved. Loved because what, amongst the dusty racks of vinyl, cassettes, VHS tapes and CDs, could smell as fabulous as that? And, even now, whenever I wander through a perfume department I’m transported back to those days, good and bad. Smell as time travel, and this is what Adelle Stripe attempts in her memoir, Base Notes. A fragrance for every part of her life, or for those parts of life she cares to reveal. Each chapter named after a perfume accompanied by a short idyllic description: the fantasy which precedes the reality of the compulsive and often uncomfortable memories to follow. Rive Gauche and her mum’s fall from ice-skating grace (“I’ve forgotten all my troubles already”) and onto the hard unforgiving rink of the Silver Blades. Lancôme’s Tresor, the romance of “European profound” laid waste by the pong of charity shop clothes, her mum’s jibes, and helping her dad deliver a dead calf. Georgio and her mum’s hairdressing salon where the customers, “Tell you about their fears and obsessions, what irritates and upsets them, but also about art, theatre and opera, a world you have never experienced but are curious to discover”. Then there’s CK One, Hugo, L’ Eau D’ Issey and many more until the self-created Lune Rose (“A bottle of perfume to say farewell and embrace the winding road that lies ahead”), all of which continue to grab your lapels in their various ways, bits of life spooling onwards to add further colour and shade to the portrait of the artist as a young woman. That Base Notes succeeds is due to the originality of the concept, testament to her brilliance as a writer and, of course, the sensitivity of her nose. My only disappointment is that White Rabbit haven’t published a scratch n sniff edition. Otherwise, superb.

Base Notes (The Scents of a Life – by Adelle Stripe publ. by White Rabbit - £20.00

Steven Long