Part of me is saddened by the fact that I'd seen the movie before I read this book, as the film is a very faithful adaptation, but on the other hand, I'm not sure I could've handled the suspense if I'd read this unaware of the ending. The prose is eerily detached, much like the protagonist, though it enhances the slow build to the novel's climax, rather than lessening my interest in the story. Grenouille is by no means one of the "friendly" serial killers that populate many recent works--Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series, for example--but I wouldn't have him any other way. ( )

PATRICK SUSKIND: Perfume

Listened on audio 2008

Original, inspired, literary, compelling.

Magic realism is something I tend to avoid since I bought the Lollipop shoes by Joanne Harris and abandoned it after a few chapters feeling cheated that I had been persuaded to a buy a book of complete and utter twaddle. Of course, all fiction is made up but it has to be believable to make it work. Or does it?

Perfume is not believable but it definitely worked for me. It is elemental, in the same way that Wuthering Heights is elemental. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is primitive and culpable, character traits that bring authenticity to the otherwise wholly magic and perverse art of his perfumery.

Grenouille was born in 1738 in the most putrid spot in France - a Paris fish market. He is described by the author as “an abomination” he has no personal odour and because of this people don't seem to like him, though they can't say why.

Grenouille is special however, he has one of the finest 'noses' in Paris, able to distinguish and isolate odours like no other. His talent is turned to profit in the perfume business and he makes a fortune. But it is not perfume that Grenouille wants to create but his own scent, which will make him irresistible. To do this he must extract the odour of a woman, while still a virgin: a process which unfortunately involves slaying the donor.

It is an epic novel with a sizeable cast and a plot that rambles with Grenouille all over France through the many years of his life including a spell of hermitage in a cave. It does wane a little in the middle but, in the final analysis, Perfume whisks you into the vile, crazy world of eighteenth-century France and the mind of a truly heartless murderer.

Suskind draws Grenouille as such a disagreeable protagonist that it is very hard for the reader to have any sympathy for such a vile monster. However, the real enjoyment of the book is the delusional, selfish, naïve, cruel, corrupt and – above all – ignorant – cast of characters that roam the back streets of the plot. If anything, these minor characters sparkle more than Grenouille and leave him rather dull and soulless in comparison, which may have been the Suskind’s intention.

Comic and pantomime it may be and yet there is a sobering message that all the fortune in the world is meaningless without companionship and acceptance.

You get the impression that Suskind was out to produce a great work of literature and has been successful, although the book is not without flaws, it would have benefitted from more editing and the final scene in particular verges on the farcical.

1985 literary historical cross-genre novel
(originally published in German as Das Parfum)

Patrick Süskind (born March 26, 1949) is a German writer and screenwriter who lives a reclusive life in Munich. ( )

Der Trick des Patrick Süskind: Kaum ein anderes Buch findet (gerade bei Frauen) so großen Zuspruch wie "Das Parfum" - aber wieso? Finden sie etwa die abartige Person des Jean-Baptiste Grenouille so bewundernswert? Freuen Sie sich daran, dass Autor Süskind Berge von toten Geschlechtsgenossinen anhäuft? Nehmen wir das Buch doch einmal auseinander, um es herauszufinden.

Von Anfang an sticht Süskinds Erzählstil ins Auge. Er versteht es meisterlich, das stinkende Paris in seiner Zeit zu beschreiben, liefert uns bildhafte Beschreibungen des Grenouille und seiner Mitmenschen, wechselt in seinen Stil von Zeit zu Zeit und erzeugt subtile Spannung.
Als der erste Mord geschieht, ist der Leser zunächst schockiert, obwohl vielleicht schon hier im Ansatz erklärt wird, warum Frauen (Ich spreche hier mitnichten von allen Frauen, sondern nur von denen, die das Buch so lieben!) dieses Buch (und seinen Antihelden?) so bewundern. Eine lange Zeit bleibt nun alles friedlich, exzessiv beschreibt Süskind, wie man Parfums macht, was Frauen sicherlich interessiert, mich aber eher gelangweilt hat. Nun gut, jedem das Seine. Kommen wir zum erzählerischen Höhepunkt, den Morden.

Rücksichtslos lässt Süskind noch einmal fünfundzwanzig Damen sterben, damit Grenouille (ich formuliere platt) sie zu Parfum verarbeitet. Es ist so gut wie sicher, dass hier der Schlüssel zum Problem liegt. Je länger man über die Stelle nachdenkt, desto klarer wird einem, warum so viele Frauen Grenouille (den ich als Scheusal empfand) sympathisch finden - es ist sein Drang, Parfum aus den Frauen zu machen. Es ist doch leicht nachvollziehbar, dass Frauen sich geschmeichelt fühlen, wenn Süskind ihnen erzählt, dass sie selbst ein Duft sind, der so lieblich, so stark ist, dass sogar Männer, die ihn tragen, von allen um sie herum geliebt werden. Es ist die Beteuerung Süskinds, dass sie aufgrund der Tatsache, dass sie Frauen sind (und daher besagten Duft in sich tragen) geliebt werden MÜSSEN. Ohne, dass sie sich darüber im Klaren werden, schlägt ihre Sympathie für Süskinds Idee an sich in Sympathie für Jean-Baptiste Grenouille um.

Vielleicht wirkt meine Rezension nun so, als hielte ich Das Parfum für ein schlechtes Buch, was nicht stimmt. Das Buch hat auch viele gute Seiten, die in den anderen Rezensionen nachzulesen sind und nicht zuletzt ist Süskinds Trick, Frauen für sein Buch und seinen Antihelden zu gewinnen, ein erzählerischer Trick, der sein Buch gegenüber vielen anderen sehr auszeichnet.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the man who can smell his way into the world, was born in the most auspicious of places – in a wet market among the guts and scales of fishes. From then on, his life has been determined by the persistent call of his nose and he finds himself in situations that bring him closer to his goal: the extracting and packaging of the most fragrant perfume of all.

Grenouille is like an autistic savant. He has a gift: a hypersensitive sense of smell, more powerful than Wolverine's, so much so that he can break down a perfume into its basic components, and even recreate it given all the scent-ingredients. The genius in him can identify not only the components of a smell but also the exact proportions of each component, the exact formula to a perfume. Yet like an autist, Grenouille has the problem of connecting emotionally with people. He is an introvert, emotionally detached from the world, and his singular purpose is what keeps him plunging ahead in life.

In Perfume, translated from the German by John E. Woods, Patrick Süskind gives a portrait of the perfumer as an artist. He does so in the style of an inverted German fairy tale, a twisted strain of the tales of the Brothers Grimm. And as a Bildungsroman, eschewing the tradition of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, the epiphanies arrive and they come in the form of scents, of odors, and of concentrated essences.

Full review at:
http://booktrek.blogspot.com/2009/09/... ( )

Having not seen the film of this book, I picked it up on a whim (and the appealing design of the Bloomsbury classics cover). I'm very glad I did.

The descriptive prose flows wonderfully from page to page, with the murders themselves being almost a side note to the beauty and grotesque of the aromas. A comparison could be drawn to American Psycho, especially in terms of entering the main characters head, but without so many shock tactics.

If you read it as a standard crime novel, you'll be disappointed. However, the unusual manner in which the times are described, together with the variety of details that are touched upon provide an engaging read more akin to the classical fairy tales. The end of the book is not as tight as the beginning, but this does not particularily detract.

Certainly twisted, but overlaid with beauty and and the twists and turns of perspective. ( )

Fascinating allegory ( )

It's hard to decide whether this book is just famous for being famous, or whether there's really something there apart from 18th century costume-drama, gratuitous slaughter of virgins and a lot of lyrical description.

The basic idea is a magic-realist conceit that makes scent into the essential external projection of our humanity: Süskind's central character, Grenouille, has no human social attributes at all (he sees other people only as an inconvenience, or occasionally as a resource to be exploited) and therefore no scent, but he learns to synthesize, and later to steal, scents that can make other people relate to him as a person.

All very clever, no doubt, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove. Grenouille, a stunted, deformed and not very intelligent bastard born under a fish-stall, is obviously intended at least in part as a grotesque parody of the Nietzschean Übermensch, a being who has risen above the delusions of morality and religion. And presumably the 18th century setting is supposed to bring in associations with the Marquis de Sade; we certainly get a lot of hints of the approaching death and destruction of the French revolution.

This has obviously been an enormously successful book, possibly simply because it was made into an American film (which I haven't seen). Without knowing of that success, I would have guessed that it's far too lyrically self-indulgent to succeed as a literary novel, and too lacking in sympathetic characters (or characters of any sort, really) to be enjoyable as a historical novel or a crime story. But maybe there is something to it, after all? ( )

Fascinating story up until the farcical ending. Enjoyed the writing style but just a bit lurid for my taste. ( )

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has no scent of his own but a very keen sense of smell, which he uses to map out his surroundings and make sense of his world. Obsessed with possessing and creating the perfect scent, Grenouille will stop at nothing. The subtitle is “The Story of a Murderer,” but this book is really about much more than that. The writing is wonderful, the story is strange and at times absurd, and the end is just straight up weird. It’s really like nothing else I’ve read. Perfume is a dark, somewhat grotesque, and utterly unique read that will appeal to fans of Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle. ( )

This was an interesting, intriguing, and disgusting story all in one. I thought all the descriptions regarding the sense of smell relating to flowers and herbs was very interesting. I had never thought of the way things smelled so much and after reading this book I have become more aware of the scent of things. The character in the book was creepy as was the storyline. But, the ending will give you the biggest shock in this story. I was not expecting it and it definately threw me for a loop! If you like murder/mystery this would be a book for you. ( )

Annorlunda bok. Är ambivalent om jag verkligen gillade den eller inte, men den får ändå en 4:a. ( )

Wonderful book. Wish I read the book before I saw the movie. ( )

Strange wonderful book. In its way it speaks of the soul of the driven artist. Nothing else matters but the gift and nothing stands in its way. Loved it. ( )

Frightening story but still a great read ( )

An expertly crafted novel which inspires sympathy for its psychopathic protagonist. ( )

This book is amazing and unique. Definatly something different.

Its got wild concepts and a great ending. If you want something different then the ordinary this is a must read. ( )

I've never actually SMELLED a story before this. ( )

A story of a murderer. Perfume is gruesome story about a boy who has an incredible sense of smell. He would kill to have the perfect perfume. I liked this book because it was very different than most murder stories. ( )

Synopsis

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

Translated from the German by John E. Woods.

I read good things about this book, it was even recommended by friends. For the first few chapters I was intrigued, the descriptions were lush and the scents assailed the senses, I could almost smell the stench of the city as described. Also, the description of Grenouille as a baby,

"It seemed to Terrier as if the child saw him with its nostrils, as if it were staring intently at him, . . . using it's nose to devour something whole. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin, into his innards."

By the time I was halfway through the book, all this wordiness was beginning to tire me, the detailed descriptions of places and people, how they got where they were, why they were doing what they were doing and thinking about what they were going to do and their opinions in society in general was just too much. It was as if the author was so in love with words, he forgot what he was writing about.

Then the story went from slightly science fantastical to totally ridiculous and I ended the book feeling slight disgusted, cheated and upset about the time I spent reading this book that I would never get back. ( )

This was a crazy story! I appreciated the experience of reading this book, and living in the nose of the protagonist... What an ending!!! ( )

Found it sometimes hard to get through, but a really interesting concept for a book. Ended strangely. ( )

Perfume is worn by people to deceive others into thinking they are what they are not. This is, essentially, the premise of Suskind's work despite him not stating this anywhere in this creepy novel. From the very start, we are thrown into a moral dilemma common to mankind: can we accept things as they are or must we, with perfume appropriate to the occasion, sweeten them to suit our own sensibilities?

The book begins with a Dickensian portrayal of Paris sensed, not with the eyes, but with the nose. From this emerges the protagonist Grenouille about whom you feel little sympathy and have less liking for. He's scorned by everyone and Suskind writes so that you too also fall prey to this temptation.

By the time Grenouille evolves into the 'murderer' of the title, you realise you're dealing with an amoral being. Still, this doesn't stop you placing him firmly somewhere within your own morality and condemning his behaviour and his scorn of society. In some insidious way that I wasn't particularly comfortable with, Suskind makes you feel guilty for doing this.

This is no more apparent than in the final scenes of the novel where morality is turned on its head and the novel comes to a screeching halt in a kind of perverted pile-up of reasoning. It's all a little disturbing which is absolutely fine. The trouble is, I came away wondering what exactly Suskind was trying to disturb and, more's the point, why.

For me the novel came very close to being excellent. Had it not been for the lack of clarity that I felt in the latter half of the novel, I'd rate it higher.

(I actually listened to the marvellously read audiobook by Sean Barrett but reviewed this here as no one else in LT has the audio listed) ( )

Jean Babtiste Grenouille has no scent of his own, but has an incomparable sense of smell. He is able to detect and catalogue all scents, picking them out from a crowd. He is a castoff, born and thrown out, raised by people who seek only to profit from him. He works in a tannery, contracts and survives anthrax. He presents himself with a delivery of hides to a perfumer and glover, and demonstrates his uncanny ability to compound scents from his memory. He leaves Paris after learning the perfumer’s techniques, lives a long time in the wild, hiding in a cave far from all scents, then returns to society, first being an example for a crackpot theory of disease, and then ending up in Grasse, to learn new techniques of extracting scents. He compounds scents to use himself, with different overtones to create different effects on people. He is drawn to the scent of a virgin, resolves to extract her scent and create a perfume that would make the world fall in love with its wearer. He becomes a murderer, and escapes the execution with the use of the scent. Luscious writing, vivid detail about perfumes and the historical period, unusual main character. ( )

I loved the movie and decided that I wanted to try out the book. When my reading group selected this one, I was excited to open it up. Suffice to say, I was satisfied with the book. The main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, was definitely… a bad person. I spent so much of the book wondering what was going on in his head, trying to diagnose just what mental illness he suffered from to be so without emotion. Cruel, perhaps not, but definitely without moral judgment or really any sense of attachment to the people around him. I found myself disgusted, asking myself, “what is wrong with this guy?!” more times that I could possibly count. Ultimately, I found all of the characters repulsive in their own way, full of their own evil and vice. I think this was intended. Chilling of all is the plot, the decision of scentless Jean-Baptiste Grenouille to possess the sweetest smell of them all: the smell of beautiful young women. He is truly a man filled only with his own strange desires and hatred. His power to map any scent, to smell everything around him, is used to this end. It’s a book about obsession, murder, mystery, mental illness, beauty… so many categories. It’s definitely a good read, too, for anyone who likes historical fiction. ( )

Twisted, but beautifully written with words that evoke sensory imaginations of smell ( )