• Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe
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Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile

  • Author
    • Adelle Stripe
£10.99
£10.99
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Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Portico Prize for Literature

'As funny and sad as anything by Dunbar herself' Observer, Books of the Year

'One of the great debut novels of the century, and one of my very favourite books ever.' David Peace

They used to say I had a chip on my shoulder. Whatever that means. I couldn't ever work that out but I know I always felt that I wasn't as good as other people. I was angry.

Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile tells the story of the tragically short life of playwright Andrea Dunbar. Interweaving fact and fiction, letters and scripts, newspaper stories and memory, Adelle Stripe reveals how a shy teenage girl defied the circumstances into which she was born, and the prejudice she met, to become one of her generation's greatest dramatists...

Set against the backdrop of the infamous Buttershaw estate in Bradford during the Thatcher era, this is an exhilarating and unforgettable account of an extraordinary woman's life, her tragedies and her triumphs.

Praise for Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile

'Snaps and prickles and brings a talented, troubled woman to life. [Stripe] gives an important story a real spark: Dunbar's energy and mischief bubble in the bleakness' Guardian

'The author's voice and Dunbar's mingle to create not just a portrait of an artist - funny, mischievous, reckless and truthful - but also divisions of class, geography and opportunity which continue to shape this country' Spectator

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  • Published: Feb 06 2025
  • Pages: 256
  • 194 x 126mm
  • ISBN: 9780349020105
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Press Reviews

  • Guardian
    Snaps and prickles and brings a talented, troubled woman to life. [Stripe] gives an important story a real spark: Dunbar's energy and mischief bubble in the bleakness

  • Jake Arnott, author of The Long Firm

    An impressively accomplished and important first novel. In a beautifully rendered double narrative Adelle Stripe gives voice to a lost genius. Heartfelt, passionate and profoundly relevant
  • Yorkshire Post
    Stitched together from letters and scripts, newspaper cutting and fractured memory, it is an undeniably harsh, yet fair portrait of one of the UK s most original voices

  • Jenni Fagan, author of The Panopticon

    This outstanding debut novel is told so naturally that it feels that we are there alongside her. A great achievement

  • Alex Preston

    Observer (Books of the Year)
    A beautiful period piece of 1980s Britain, as funny and sad as anything by Dunbar herself

  • Andy Miller

    Spectator
    Stripe's novel mixes fiction and biography in a manner that brings to mind the work of the late Gordon Burn . . . It fizzes like two Disprin in a pint of cider. The author's voice and Dunbar's mingle to create not just a portrait of an artist - funny, mischievous, reckless and truthful - but also divisions of class, geography and opportunity which continue to shape this country. You can read it in an afternoon and should; there are too few British novels as effervescent or as relevant as this
  • Independent
    Harsh yet beautifully wrought . . . It is fiction grounded in fact, re-telling Dunbar's short life that had plenty of drama of its own

  • Michael Arditti

    BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review
    Extraordinary
  • Yorkshire Post
    An outstanding debut novel

  • Niall Griffiths, author of Sheepshagger

    Everything about this novel, the stuff of it, is wondrously, awfully, beautifully alive, as teeming and seething and tragic as Andrea Dunbar's own wild work and life. My book of the year so far
  • David Peace
    One of the great debut novels of the century, and one of my very favourite books ever.