You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by lunchpoems
Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe
5.0
How do you know what the realities are of life in the north? George said. Now, I recently played a bouncer who works at a club where girls get older men to buy them bottles of champagne for £200 and get sex as part of the deal. If I told that story to people in Bradford they’d never believe it. And it’s the same for you. You blatantly know nothing of Bradford, so what makes you think we aren’t telling the truth?’
Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is the novelisation of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar’s short life. By the time she tragically passed away aged 29, she had written three plays: The Arbor; Rita, Sue and Bob Too (for which she is best known) and Shirley. Dunbar experienced almost extreme poverty, classism, physically and mentally abusive relationships and what can now be assumed as manic depressive episodes, as well as an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. She had three children by three different men, and when she wrote her first play aged 18, she had never even been in a theatre. I didn’t know that much about Dunbar before reading this book, but it is a testament to both her life and to Stripe’s writing that this has easily become one of my favourite reads of the year. Black Teeth is a no-holds-barred kitchen sink noir look at Thatcher’s Britain, as well as an evocative portrait of an equally evocative woman. What I liked is that Stripe does not aim for “likeability” - she does not shy away from things like racism and violence in Buttershaw, Dunbar’s estate. The father of her first child was a Pakistani man, and the racist treatment of both him and the child by Dunbar and others is portrayed in as much detail as the abuse she suffered from him is. A horribly beautiful novel.
Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is the novelisation of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar’s short life. By the time she tragically passed away aged 29, she had written three plays: The Arbor; Rita, Sue and Bob Too (for which she is best known) and Shirley. Dunbar experienced almost extreme poverty, classism, physically and mentally abusive relationships and what can now be assumed as manic depressive episodes, as well as an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. She had three children by three different men, and when she wrote her first play aged 18, she had never even been in a theatre. I didn’t know that much about Dunbar before reading this book, but it is a testament to both her life and to Stripe’s writing that this has easily become one of my favourite reads of the year. Black Teeth is a no-holds-barred kitchen sink noir look at Thatcher’s Britain, as well as an evocative portrait of an equally evocative woman. What I liked is that Stripe does not aim for “likeability” - she does not shy away from things like racism and violence in Buttershaw, Dunbar’s estate. The father of her first child was a Pakistani man, and the racist treatment of both him and the child by Dunbar and others is portrayed in as much detail as the abuse she suffered from him is. A horribly beautiful novel.