Rating: 
Summary: Horribly Beautiful!
Review: Perfume is written in such a way that evoke all the senses. It is a story of a dark pitiful character of Jean Baptise Grenouille who was deprived of every basic human need to survive as an infant because of his special talent and characteristic. It continues with a beautiful yet haunting journey inside Paris, French countryside to the south for his ultimate goal to distil the most perfect scent. It is seducing, alluring and disgusting at the same time. I enjoyed this book tremendously.
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Summary: Perfume is back!
Review: I was pleased to find this back in print.. I loved the texture of the words 15 years ago. And it is still wonderful. I am also looking for the perfect perfume. Reading it again has awakened my sense of smell as it has become very acute. I can smell the odors he smells. I smell the different fragrances all around me. Maybe in my next life, I will become a famous yet moral 'nose.'
Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent Prose
Review: I'll skip the redundancy of a synopsis and just tell you what I thought. Magnificent. It is more than apparent that Suskind is not afraid to make sure every sentence, every word, is there for a reason. Some of the writing in this novel is so, so, dead on and wholly original that it surprised a jaded big chain bookstore slave such as myself. My only sore point with the book was its ending. I was somewhat disappointed by its abruptness. It just felt a little undeserving of the preceeding work. I don't know, just my opinion. Mace
Rating:
Summary: An all-powerful sense
Review: Strangely, this excellent novel was completely ignored by every list I know of, about the best books of the century. True, the XX century was prodigal in good writers, but I think this one deserves a better appreciation.Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is the son of a fisher-merchant woman in Paris. He is a destitute boy with strange characteristics: he doesn't have a smell, but his smelling sense is absolute. No odor escapes from his nose (in XVIII century Paris that was not necessarily a pleasant experience, I guess). He is raised in an orphanage, and then becomes an apprentice in a leather-clothes shop. Later, he works for a perfume-making house, which he takes to the highest levels thanks to his sensitivity to smells. After living seven years in a cave, he establishes his own perfumerie, and sets to accomplish his goal: the perfect perfume, one that will force people to love him. For Jean Baptiste is an awful man. He has never known any love, throughout his life. He is ugly and unlikable, as well as a solitary man. To make the perfume, he must kill 25 beautiful virgins and mix their hair and clothes. The ending is pure magical horror. "The Perfume" is well written and the story has an utmost originality. The depiction of Paris in the XVIII century is superb, as well as the character of this outstanding personality in literature. It is quasi-science fiction, a thriller, a story of a misled search for love and a biography of the strangest man. Strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: magical journey
Review: I was so captured by this book! The descriptions are so real and it was like I was sucked in to the story. After I had read the book it was still with me for days. It was like I was more aware of my smell, as if it enhanced this sense. You realy start to dislike the person during the course of the book, but you also start to have some strange sort of understanding...disbelieve...horror...and those feelings are doubled by the fact that it's all written from the killers point of view! I read this book last year and it was defenately the book that captured me most in 2000. Read it!
Rating: 
Summary: Like a good steak
Review: That is to say, only medium well done. The cover blurbs of the copy I have make much of how 'horrifying' and 'brilliant' this book is, going so far as to compare it to Umberto Eco. I find it to be closer to the work of, say, Susan Kay. Don't get me wrong, this book is entertaining. The concept of the scent-master is (as far as I know) quite original, and the theme is carried out consistently throughout the book. The author has a sharp eye for detail and is not afraid to stray from his plot for an interesting digression, which is always nice to see (myself, I would that he had more discretion in deciding what subjects qualified as 'interesting' but that is a matter of taste.) However, the characterization of the mass murderer as an amoral, asocial creature with delusions of grandeur is frankly overdone. It belongs in a Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comic. Worse, the author can never quite seem to decide how much irony he wants to lay on, sometimes seeming embarassingly earnest, other times plunging his story into ridiculousness with a wink (Ok, we get it! Everyone who interacts with your main character is going to come to a bad end! How clever.) As for the supposedly shocking and horrifying nature of this book, a heap of corpses does not true horror make. By refusing to allow any empathy for any of his doomed characters, the author may be trying to force us to take the point of view of his sociopathic protagonist, but in reality, he dries up the source of most of the potential emotional impact of the final chapters. The climax and finale are rushed, abrupt, and present a barely-surmountable temptation to skip ahead to the last page. The overall impression I was left with was that the author studied so hard to be unsentimental that he fell over the edge into reverse sentimentality, a sort of simpering affection for nasty occurances not coupled with any real insight.
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Summary: The novel for all perfume afficionados
Review: The novel for all perfume afficionados to read is 'Perfume - The Story of a Murderer' by Patrick Suskind. It is a masterpiece, a prowl of the streets and alleys of eighteenth-century France, the period in which Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI reigned. It is the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the finest nose in Paris. Süskind describes the atmosphere in the quarters of the Sorbonne and the faubourg (suburb) Saint-Germain where the rich people lived. This is where Grenouille first smelled perfume in the literal sense...a simple lavender or rose water, with which the fountains of the gardens were filled on gala occasions....and costly scents...of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose, jonquil, jasmine or cinnamon, that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze...
Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: boring, no climax at all, a very weak ending, almost none dialogues, a ridiculous main character ( the murderer ), a wry style of writing. And people say this is good .. GO figure ...
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Summary: A Rose by...
Review: It has been 10 to 11 years since I have the novel, but many things still stick with me; the ending of the book, the baby being left on the doorstep and wetnurses not wanting to feed him, the first time the young man catches the perfect scent. This is just a fantastic novel. There are times when it can be a little slow, but the payoff for those sections are worth. There are passages that are so beautifully written that there really isn't much that can be said. But I do wonder how much changes in the translation to English, but... maybe that is better left unknown and just appreciate the near perfection of it.
Rating:
Summary: Deliciously decadent.
Review: This luciously depicted novel is both a vivid evocation of life in eighteenth century Paris and an homage to the least celebrated of our senses-that of smell. In language so onomatopoetic it must have been an almost insuperable challenge for the translator, Suskind tells the tale of Grenouille (Frog), an orphan on the streets of Paris whose hard life would have destroyed a less single-minded pursuer of the sensuous life. Grenouille's sense of smell is so subtly attuned that he can distinguish a single, elemental scent among the various aromas and stenches bombarding him. He can identify individuals from their unique scents, and he is willing to kill to preserve or distill the most glorious of these. As Grenouille moves from his apprenticeship in a butcher shop (depicted in odoriferous detail) to that of a perfumer, the reader is bombarded with scents so intoxicatingly described that s/he may reach for the nearest atomizer in order to participate personally in the sensuous celebrations. One of the most gloriously descriptive novels you will ever read, it is also an unforgettable commentary on depravity, unfettered arrogance, and ironically misplaced idealism, which culminates in a final, thunderous scene of exuberant depravity.
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