Rating: 
Summary: o.k. book. avoid unless you are really really bored
Review: it's really not very good. had some promise at the beginning, but it fell apart.
Rating: 
Summary: "Perfume" lingers in your thoughts
Review: A gruesome tale told with consumate grace. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille takes us on an journey through the sights and smells of the decadent 18th-century France of King Louis the Beloved. Possessed of a virtually autistic brilliance, Grenouille has an abnormally sharp sense of smell and nothing else. Like many a prodigy, he is bored by the everyday applications of genius, and instead sets off in search of the holy grail of the perfumer's art: the creation of a scent which could induce love of the person wearing it. For Grenouille, murder is just a not particularly important aspect of the destillation process. The book is crafted in rich imagery and with biting irony, especially when describing the book's unusually vivid supporting cast. Indeed, the supporting characters are in my opinion one of this book's strongest aspects and Süskind makes brilliant use of them. Where other books leave their eventual fate a mystery, Süskind wrings a few more pages out of each one at their writing-out, briefly taking us a few days or years into the future to witness the often horrorous endings met by those whose paths cross that of the perfumer.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfume: modern classic
Review: ...this book is really great: a modern classic. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary literature. Forget the "murder" aspect of this book, it's just a vihicle for the author to construct a world based on scent. Situated in 17th century France, the main character creates scents that alter the world's perception of him. This may sound trite, but, in actuality, it's a very, very cool book.
Rating:
Summary: So good it reeks...
Review: Very quickly I will state that I was given this book by a professor at the University of West Florida and, having not heard anything about it, it sat on a shelf for five months. Then I decided to give it a chance out of boredom more than anything else...and suddenly found that I could not put it down. A contemporary classic. Rich imagery, captivating characters, a suspenseful storyline and flowing prose (the translation seems to be much better here than other German-English texts I have read - kudos to John E. Woods) make this a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Review: Absolutely intense! From begining to end. You don't want to stop the reading. You get so involve that with out noticing your attitude before the smells and odors around you start changing.Incredibly smart and evil even in the smallest details.A "must".
Rating:
Summary: Language so intense, you could smell it....
Review: A friend bought me this book... it was her favortite book in college. (I think she read it in Germman, though).
It tells the story of a man that bears no scent... but has the most incredible sense of smell in all the world. He goes from a rodent of Paris society, to a town curiosity, to a hero of sorts.
The language of the book is so intense, you can almost imagine the smells, then curse yourself for not having the characters same gift for storing scents in his brain.
This book was easy to read, in the way that the story was compelling and the language so wonderful, that it just left you wanting more.
Rating:
Summary: an utterly alien and perverted genius
Review: This is the delightful story of twisted and evil genius as he blazes a trail of crime and perversion in pre-Revololutionary France. At times frightening and hilarious, it is always fascinating as the reader learns about the smells of the age and how to manufacture perfume. A good measure of the bizarre ideas about the "science" of the era are included as well, which adds spice to the mix. As such, it has what the best historical novels have to offer: a unique window into history, individualized into a story that is moving and yet alien. I was utterly fascinated from the first page. There are also some bizarre plot twists - very bizarre - that hold an indefinable kind of mystery in this thing we call life. Highest recommendation.
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Summary: The Hannibal Lector of olfaction,over 200 years ago.
Review: Except that Mr. Suskind is a better writer than Mr. Harris,even in the translation. The pure deviousness of this tale,and the descriptions of the hard life in France back then are absolutely authentic, starting with the culprit's cruel, unwanted birth. This fellow is a little like Jack the Ripper too,besides having Lector's undeniable nasty genius. A riveting read all the way through, though the bizarre,over-erotic ending may send it over the top. A must for all perfume connoisseurs with a bent for a good, though twisted,mystery. Also a must for Avon ladies, and Revlon employees! Surprising it has not been made into a movie,at least as far as I know...BTW, I noticed that John Woods is the translator, the same gentleman who has done the recent,brilliant translations of a lot of Thomas Mann.
Rating: 
Summary: Murder as Art - rather typifies the present age!
Review: The book elegantly and slyly poses the point that one can be an "artist" in ANY field, if "gifted" enough, including butchering young women and concocting perfumes from their glands. Ah, the delight! First, I imagine that most readers and the author (unless a very ill person) have never really smelled the scent of death, in all its sickly-sweetness; otherwise, they would not be so fascinated by Chanel No. 5 still having as key ingredient the genital spray of a civet cat! In all seriousness, the notion that art trumps and/or transcends all morality is so typical of the present day and age that it has become absurd in its tedium. I suppose the attack on the WTC was artistic in its boldness, audacity, sense of scale, grandeur and, of curse, the dramatic! I will even give away the ending to this book, where the great artist-murderer sacrifices his body to the actual consumption of the mob, so that they can eat of his artistry! I guess I now await a novelized treatment on the intense but oh-so-very cooly professional artistry of Osama, bin Laden.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, but not quite a Masterpiece
Review: When the first english language version of "Perfume" was released in 1986, readers went crazy. Many placed it among the best books they'd ever read, myself included. A reread, fifteen years later yields a different, more muted, reaction. The book is good, very good. But it is not great. "Perfume" succeeds so well because the premise is so startlingly novel. An olfactory genius in 18th-century Paris who can make a fortune creating perfumes more complicated and subtle than any ever made, is a sociopathic monster. Or as Suskind describes him, a "tick" who can roll up into a defensive ball or periodically drop himself into society. Grenouille is a compelling and disturbing character because Suskind has painted him in such realistic tones. Each effort to capture a new scent impels him farther, taking more chances and testing his limits, exploiting new techniques and his own criminal daring. This is true criminal pattern and makes Grenouille terrifyingly believable. But the book can not be a great one, because Suskind's prose tends toward the overdone. Perhaps it reads better in the original German, but his maddening penchant for rephrasing and repeating the same notion and turning a sentence into a paragraph finally dulls the senses and sets the reader skimming along searching for the next important point. The plot is so unique that it is brilliant. The execution is powerful, not only in Grenouille's characterization, but also because Suskind has done his homework and is smoothly at ease with 18th century mores and the science of perfume. But the squishy repetitive prose and unfocused paragraphs keep "Perfume" from joining the ranks of literary masterpieces.
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