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Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile
On sale
2nd November 2017
Price: £9.99
Portico Prize, 2020
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
‘A beautiful period piece of 1980s Britain, as funny and sad as anything by Dunbar herself’ Alex Preston, Observer (Books of the Year)
‘An outstanding debut novel’ Yorkshire Post
‘It fizzes like two Disprin in a pint of cider . . . You can read it in an afternoon and should; there are too few British novels as effervescent or as relevant as this’ Andy Miller, Spectator
Best known for her classic black comedy Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Andrea Dunbar wrote three plays before dying at a tragically young age. This new literary portrayal features a cast of real and imagined characters set against the backdrop of the infamous Buttershaw estate during the Thatcher era.
A bittersweet tale of the north/south divide, it reveals how a shy teenage girl defied the circumstances into which she was born and went on to become one of her generation’s greatest dramatists. Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is a poignant piece of kitchen sink noir that tells Dunbar’s compelling story in print for the very first time.
Adelle Stripe’s writing has been described as having ‘an abundance of life, from the casually joyful to the casually harrowing, but always profoundly empathetic’. Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is her keenly anticipated debut novel.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
‘A beautiful period piece of 1980s Britain, as funny and sad as anything by Dunbar herself’ Alex Preston, Observer (Books of the Year)
‘An outstanding debut novel’ Yorkshire Post
‘It fizzes like two Disprin in a pint of cider . . . You can read it in an afternoon and should; there are too few British novels as effervescent or as relevant as this’ Andy Miller, Spectator
Best known for her classic black comedy Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Andrea Dunbar wrote three plays before dying at a tragically young age. This new literary portrayal features a cast of real and imagined characters set against the backdrop of the infamous Buttershaw estate during the Thatcher era.
A bittersweet tale of the north/south divide, it reveals how a shy teenage girl defied the circumstances into which she was born and went on to become one of her generation’s greatest dramatists. Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is a poignant piece of kitchen sink noir that tells Dunbar’s compelling story in print for the very first time.
Adelle Stripe’s writing has been described as having ‘an abundance of life, from the casually joyful to the casually harrowing, but always profoundly empathetic’. Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is her keenly anticipated debut novel.
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Reviews
An outstanding debut novel
Harsh yet beautifully wrought . . . It is fiction grounded in fact, re-telling Dunbar's short life that had plenty of drama of its own
Extraordinary
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
A beautiful period piece of 1980s Britain, as funny and sad as anything by Dunbar herself
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
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
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
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
This outstanding debut novel is told so naturally that it feels that we are there alongside her. A great achievement