Patrick Süskind

A clear sign of a really great book is when suggesting it resembles a drug deal. With other books you praise the character development, the plot, the use of language, the deeper meaning, but with something as intoxicating as the Perfume by Patrick Süskind, you're reduced to oh man, it's fu***** great, trust me, you have to try it, probably with a crazy look that would make your mother worry about the kind of things you do in your spare time.

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Our sense of smell and how it can trigger emotional feelings and memories is used in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind as we read about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an unloved orphan in 18th century France who is born with an exceptional sense of smell but without a personal scent of his own. This young orphan exhibits all the characteristics of a psychopath as he has no sense of empathy toward people or animals and only cares about how he can use them to his advantage.

After show more a very difficult young life, he is able to talk his way into becoming apprenticed to one of Paris’ successful perfumers but in his search for new smells he encounters a young girl with a wondrous personal scent. He murders her simply to have access to that scent. Eventually he leaves Paris in an attempt to learn new techniques so that he can preserve an even wider range of odors. Although he becomes increasingly disgusted with people and spends some time living as a hermit, he soon heads to the south of France and works for a perfumer there. He also finds another young girl whose scent makes him believe that he can develop a perfume that would hypnotize people into thinking the wearer is god-like. In his quest for developing this perfume he murders more young women in order to use their body parts to evolve the fragrance that he is working on.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a gruesome, fantasy tale in which the author blends both factual information and fairy-tale story telling about a murderer and his obsessive quest for a perfect perfume. I found the information and facts about the manufacture of perfume to be very interesting but, this was a difficult book to enjoy due to it’s dark themes. However, the author gives us well written prose that elevates the story and makes us ponder upon the importance of fragrance. show less

There are geniuses in our midst - painters, musicians, writers, chefs, persons who work in mediums that one can see and hear and feel and taste - mediums that last. But for author Patrick Süskind, that wasn't enough.

In 1985, Süskind published what would become his best-known work internationally: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. And while little has been seen of, or from, the author since the novel's publication (and subsequent translation from the original German, plus a feature film in show more 2006) one is certain that within this medium lies his greatest strength; it's a kind of magical realism that pulls on the source of endless memories, and which relentlessly binds the reader to that world.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born into abandonment with no scent of his own, carves his way through life in pursuit of what one can only call the scent of pure love - that essence which he has been denied since before his untimely birth. This is not simply a novel about that fifth sense to which the title alludes, but about a man for whom that sense is so keen, and whose beacon of purpose shines so brightly, that the reader cannot help but urge him on to the finale. The protagonist (though I almost hesitate to call him that) is not your average serial killer, and his story certainly borders on the unusual.

Süskind's intoxicating prose is embellishment itself - labeling each and every scent of the world as if the olfactory genius is recalling them by scientific name and spitting them out like ticker tape onto the page. This kind of barrage of words might seem affronting, but in Suskind's hand it's magical and enticing. The words race towards the climax which is nothing short of a literal orgy which Grenouille has induced.

The film adaptation (which stars Ben Whishaw, and features Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Hurd-Wood) is a visual stunner that develops some of the finer points of Grenouille's education very nicely but, without the omniscient prose of the novel, much of the richness and detail is lost in the medium translation. One countdown (Laure's approaching birthday) is replaced with another (the 13 essences) more effective device, bringing things to a conclusion more swiftly, but losing delicate layers of aromatic ambience that make the novel shine. The film is a splendid portrayal of scent as a medium, but the novel is significantly more gratifying, and far more varied and interesting a feast for the consumer.

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Grenouille (the French word for frog) is possessed of a super power, the ability to distinguish any scent and its source however mixed it may be with others. Unfortunately his morality steers chaotic neutral at best, which means he thinks nothing of murder if it moves him closer to becoming the greatest perfumer in history. Suskind writes with a surprisingly light tone. Rather than building a sense of dread, it feels more like "Let's see what that rascal Grenouille is getting up to next." show more The intervention of fate becomes something playful, swooping along in Grenouille's wake as it intersects with the lives he's touched. Then it gets decidedly darker in the latter half, a better match for Grenouille's true character as he matures and his methods become more extreme.

This is a curious mix of time-honoured themes about the importance of love and the ultimate emptiness of power, rolled together with some Camus absurdity and a dash of magical realism. I didn't find it altogether satisfying, but it's a short enough and reads quick enough, with the highs of humour and lows of horror to spice it up. I learned far more about making perfume than I ever cared to know, but it's an impressive degree of detail that raised my appreciation for the trade. show less