Perfume: The Story of a Murderer [Hardcover]

This is a novel so beautifully written that it transcends into literature. Ingenious in its conception and carefully crafted, the author has created a unique and dazzling work of fiction. Divided into three parts, the book tells the story of a most unusual life, that of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

The first part of the book establishes that he was born to a woman who was hung from a gibbet for having left him to die. It turns out that Jean-Baptiste is an unusual baby. He gives people the willies, because, unlike most babies, Jean-Baptiste has no scent.

Over time, Jean-Baptiste develops into a boy with a secret gift. His olfactory sense is developed to a degree unheard of in humans. He delights in parsing the odors around him. Ugly, friendless, and a loner, he eventually ventures into the city of Paris, a malodorous and pungent cornucopia of smells. Believe me, there is plenty to sniff out in eighteenth century Paris! Jean-Baptiste savors each whiff, and the book conveys these olfactory delights with meticulous, descriptive precision.

His bleak existence is transformed, however, when he one day captures a heady scent of such exquisite beauty that he finds himself obsessed with it. Determined to have that scent at all costs, he eventually sniffs it out. It turns out to be the scent of a young virgin on the cusp of flowering into a woman. It is a scent that he must possess. What he does to do so will surely chill the reader.

Jean-Baptiste eventually maneuvers to get himself apprenticed to a perfumer, so that he can have the opportunity to learn the trade and create scents. He leads a bleak existence, subsisting as little more than a slave to the perfumer for whom he works.

The second part of the book begins when Jean-Baptiste leave his employer and goes on a personal pilgrimage, leading an austere existence away from civilization for many years. There, he withdraws into himself even further, living a totally self-sustaining, hermitic existence. He ultimately realizes what other have sensed about him. Jean-Baptiste has no personal scent. He simply does not smell.

With this knowledge, he returns to civilization where, having lived as practically an animal for many years, he creates a fictitious and adventurous scenario to account for his filthy and disgusting appearance. Subsequently, he is taken under the wing of some local nobility and feted and pampered. Realizing the importance of scent, he creates a personal scent for himself. He now realizes that he who has the power over scent can rule supreme. He intends to do so.

The third part of the book has Jean-Baptiste migrating to a town that is the hub for the scent trade. Perfumes, oils, and soaps are the stock in trade for this town and, as such, beckon brightly to Jean-Baptiste. Once there, he again smells a scent so delectable that he longs to possess it. He knows that scent for what it is and now knows that it is the scent, and not the personal charms of its bearer, that captures the attention and devotion of others. Jean Baptiste wants to harness that scent at all costs. He desperately desires the power to make others love him. He wants to be supreme.

It is his desperate desire to harness and possess that celestial scent that causes Jean-Baptiste, a socio-path with little empathy for others, to prey upon the maidens of the town in order to obtain that which he needs. It is his obsession that lays at the heart of the vortex that arises in the town, as murder after murder occurs. Yet, no one suspects him. What ultimately happens leads to an almost unbelievable climax, when Jean-Baptiste finds himself consumed by the passion he has managed to arouse in others through scent.

This is a heady, quirky, and compelling debut novel, like nothing I have ever before read. Complex and lyrical in its telling, it is a novel that stays with the reader long after the last page is turned. Bravo!

How many books stay with you after a year? Five years? A decade? I remember reading THE PARFUME while in high school, about twenty years ago and it is as if I was immersed into Suskind's masterpiece only yesterday.

The story unfolds effortlessly and you are made to simply accept Grenouille's unique gift, life-long obsession and bittersweet curse. Olfaction is a mysterious sense to begin with. It is atavistic, inescapably emotional and resistant to mnemonic recall. And Suskind expertly builds on these fleeing attributes a robust story, one that brings to mind first experiences and reticent desires and concealed fears.

The book is not only majestic but it is also set in a biblical-like footing. The protagonist treads through life like a forgettable ghost. Then he goes into an intense self-exile, fasting in a cave before coming into the wold to fulfill his mission. And even though his mission is as ethereal and ephemeral as a passing scent, no one will be able to forget him.

The movie was a good adaptation but it does not even compare to the book.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

My opinion here is completely unbiased. I haven't seen the film and knew nothing about this story before I started the book.
A very unusual but gripping tale, I must say. Well written, definitely.

This is the story of Grenouille, a baby born without hopes and left on a pile of rubbish by his own mother. Certain death, especially in 1738, would be expected but does not happen. Against all odds, Grenouille survives and grows up with a very distinctive feature: his olfactory system. From infancy, no scent, no smell, unpleasant or otherwise, escapes his nostrils. He categorizes each one of them and an endless sort of data base is stored in his brain.
A very inconspicuous fellow, without distinctive features, he is able to survive in a world that has deceived him from day one. And in turn, in his profound uneasiness, he becomes the deceiver. Little by little he starts to realise that his olfactory ability is indeed something that could turn useful, one day. Something for which people would appreciate him perhaps. Real love, real affection, he does not know. Perhaps he yearns for it. But in reality, he loathes people and is comfortable in his loneliness. And one day (he's about 12 by now) he picks up a faint scent in the air that he cannot name but gives him an incredible yearning. An irresistible urge to find the source of that scent and an infallible nose lead him to that source.....

From then on, a lot else happens. And Grenouille, that fragile, plain, indistinct, shadowy and secretive being takes us from one side of France to the next on a twisted olfactory errand. It is impossible not to be awed by this very distinctive feature of his. With it, when `utilized' properly, he is able to do wonders. But it is equally impossible not to commiserate him, not to feel sorry for a very lonely, lost soul even though his malignant twist cannot but horrify us.

A very unusual, disturbing story. A story where smell, stench, scent or delicate perfume mingle and replace our eyes and ears. I bet that this book will make you think about some veritable concepts contained here: i.e. our olfactory system has an incredible memory. Lost loves, Granny's apple pie, baby days, all it takes is a whiff of something we smelled before and we are travelling back in time...

If some nuances were lost in translation (from German) I do not know, but I found the prose stylish and entertaining. A 5 stars book from the beginning. My only disappointment came towards the end. An end which probably befits the whole medieval, grotesque tale but it was way, way too far fetched in my opinion (hence the 4 stars). Still, well worth reading it as it has the quality of a classic.