Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

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Summary: A gReAt BoOk. hOwEvEr....
Review: I loved this book, it's terrific. The only problem I found is that it is annonced as the story of a murderer, but he starts killing 20 pages before the book ends. How come!!


Rating:
Summary: The strange smell of success
Review: A very curious book, certainly. The book's protagonist is an alien being. Grenouille. Born in the slums of Paris in the mid-eighteenth century, he is alien because he has no smell of his own. He arouses disgust, loathing and fear from those who bring him up. His own complete absence of smell is the other characteristic of a monster, and there is no other word for this strange being, who has preternatural olfactory powers of a much higher order, it would seem, than that of the most acute bloodhound's. He is a deformed being too, from his upbringing and disease. We follow this being in Paris, where he becomes apprenticed to a failing perfumer, and where he commits a murder, of a young girl who provides him with that ultimate essence of scent for which he has been searching. (This gives nothing away as the title tells you he is a murderer.) Later we follow him to a self-imposed exile on a lonely volcanic peak in the Auvergne, and then to Montpellier and Grasse.

The book starts promisingly. The language is rich and sensual, mingling the disgusting and the sublime with great confidence, and not a little wit. How to convey to a reader an odour, a reek, or a cacophony of smells? It's hard, but Patrick Susskind pulls out all the stops, and succeeds beautifully. It is practical and applied synaesthetics of a very high order. The book includes some wonderful detail about the trade and art of perfumery in France in its pre-revolutionary days and in the latter half Patrick Susskind pokes fun at the excesses of the various psuedosciences that idle and silly rich people indulged in during that age.

The first half of the book goes well, and the pages turn with interest and delight in the previously unexplored areas of the sense of smell (and the sense of place - Paris in the eighteenth century). However in the second half of the book the pages turn easily enough, but with increasingly less interest and less delight. The end of the book is reached with relief, for the story no longer holds any interest at all. The novel starts as a fairy-tale, a strange and forbidding one certainly, but no more so than a story from Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm. But the fantasy becomes ever more strained, wild and ultimately just plainly risible, so that the thread of the story becomes a meaningless mélange of farce and horror.

I would really like to know exactly what Patrick Susskind was writing about, why he wrote this story, and what he wanted us to take from it. If it were to open our nostrils, sniff the air (and everything else) and use our sense of olfaction more, then he probably has succeeded; and he may well be right, there is literally a lot going on under our noses that we are completely oblivious of, yet which affects our thoughts, emotions and actions every day. But such a strange book, on which he must have lavished much care, with such a strange story, becoming ever stranger and outrageously bizarre to the very end, must surely have been written to provoke more than that. But for the life of me, I don't know what it was.

If a book can have an odour, and Perfume must surely qualify above any other, then this book certainly smells of success, but whilst the head note was exotic and seductive, the heart note was meagre and shallow, and the lingering base note rank and sour. When I at last closed the end paper I realised, fortunately, that my sense of smell was not that acute, and that within a few minutes the rancid base note had dissolved rapidly into my domestic surroundings, and was not discernible at all.

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Summary: sniff it out
Review: I read this book in two days. I became obsessed to finish it, like the character does with the perfect scent. I don't read too many books where the main character has almost no likability. You want to feel excited when he learns everything about perfuming, and sad when he is not shown love by anyone, or angry when some injustice has been done to him, but then you read on about how this person just doesn't care one way or the other about such trivial things. He is lead through life by his nose and that's all he cares about. This story definately makes you think and use your noggin, because i keep thinking back trying to make sense of the ending, the middle, and the beginning. I really can't wait to see the movie coming out, and I'm really curious to see how the main character will be played. I hope Alan Rickman will be playing Baldini, because he had some very powerful dialog. Of course it would be weird to see him bald. I highly recommend reading this book. It's weird, gross, demented and absolutely a joy to read.

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Summary: A different view of the world
Review: I love the book because the lead character has a view of the world that is completely alien to anything I understand.

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Summary: A Marvelous Read
Review: In the process of writing this review, it came to my attention that this book has been around for more than 15 years. It is a testimony to the uniqueness of its story and the extraordinary writing skills of Patrick Suskind that it has already withstood this modest but significant test of time. I read it perhaps a year ago, and tout it, as I often do with books I love, to practically everyone interested in good literature. It is, as you have gleaned, the story of an improbable, make that impossible, character, Grenouille, a man born to astonishing poverty, a man somehow born without a smell of his own, yet with astonishing olfactory skills. He naturally becomes a perfumer, and guided by a sociopathic lack of morality that matches his lack of smell, a serial killer who tracks his prey by sense of smell. Sounds absurd, doesn't it? But from the moment you open the first page, you are catapulted to Paris in the 18th Century, and an astonishing journey through France guided by Suskind's amazing descriptions of literally thousands of smells. Every paragragh seems to contain some new smell, some concoction that is so deft and engaging in its description that you marvel at the author's research and skills. I'm not sure if these reviews could even begin to tell you how extraordinary this book is: perhaps interested parties should just click on the opening page above and see if it draws you in the way it did me and countless others. I must agree with a number of the other reviewers who felt the ending was a bit jarring, over the top, slightly out of step with the tightly woven narrative that preceeded it. Others were astonished and blown away by it: on this subject, there won't be a lot of middle ground. But I can't imagine anyone who loves really wonderful writing not loving this book. I just started posting reviews this year, and in most of them, I refer to the other books, mostly historical fiction and historical non-fiction, that have stayed with me after reading. I'm going to avoid that here: Mr. Suskind deserves all the individual attention and praise I can muster for writing a book that is like none other you will ever read.

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Summary: Original and sensual
Review: In a world with millions of different books, it's a rare thing to find a novel with such a unique plot and character. Everything in Perfume centers around the sense of smell and the main character's actions that likewise revolve around smell. This may sound boring and unexciting, but because of Suskind's language and the way he brings Grenouille to life in such a horrifying, seductive manner, you become mesmerized and engrossed in the novel.
Fortunately, the translation is excellent. Wood's first language must be english because it reads smoothly and flows beautifully.
Though there are many things in Perfume that are appalling, it is one of the most sensual books I have ever read. This is because of the passion which Grenouille has regarding scents. It is a remarkable, original novel and is not boring in the least (I read it in two days). Read Perfume...

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Summary: Groteque and disturbing, yet compelling
Review: This novel manages to take the simplest act and skewer it into a frightenly intense ritual, by forcing us to consider what it would be like to experience every smell as a seperate entity. Bizarre and sensual details make you feel as though you are literally drowning in scent.The hero, Grenouille, is as monstrous as he is brillant and fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: The most amazing thing of this book it's how much more sensitive to perfumes and smells you become after reading it. I chanced on it just after I had read a book on aromatherapy, so I guess it means a lot more to me than most. Also, as a poet that often writes about Nature, I found certain descriptions very impressive. I read the whole book in just two sittings during the weekend. Just sit back and enjoy - this is a real jewel. Pure pleasure!

Rating:
Summary: A fresh scent
Review: Perfume is a timelessly original novel, as imaginative as it is oddly romantic. This book's charm lies in its character: Grenouille, who was born not having a scent, yet his sense of smell is a thousandfold more intricate than the average person.

Süskind describes 18th c. France with a sort of gory detail and grit while showing us how Grenouille lumbers through his miserable life working in a tannery and eventually a perfume shop, where his crafts are better suited as a scent creator. His ambitions go much further, however, and a far darker journey for this creature begins.

Perfume is one of the most unique books I've ever read, not even considering its impactive ending. It is a delicious exploration of darkness and the human senses that is sure to entertain in its own twisted way.

Rating:
Summary: Scent as sense
Review: The text is dense, and after I was only a third of the way through I received another book in the mail that I was eager to read, so I was in a hurry to finish it. But this is a well-written book. The author is very good in his use of images, and the way he shows the normal people of the world to be as ugly in their love as Grenouille is in his hate. I'm not sure I agree with the story's premise about the all-consuming power of scent, but I still recommend this book. It is not a light read, but if you're in the mood for something a little bit weighty, this is definitely an interesting ride.