

Loading... Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985)by Patrick Süskind
![]()
» 62 more Best Horror Books (15) 501 Must-Read Books (102) German Literature (30) Magic Realism (29) Historical Fiction (56) BBC Big Read (81) 20th Century Literature (199) 1980s (22) Top Five Books of 2020 (168) Summer Reads 2014 (26) To Read - Horror (1) Page Turners (30) Top Five Books of 2015 (506) 1,001 BYMRBYD Concensus (140) Books Read in 2020 (2,375) A Novel Cure (271) Books Read in 2017 (2,623) Unread books (382) Books Read in 2018 (3,626) True Crime (121) Reading Globally (43) Europe (161) Books tagged favorites (348) Protagonists - Men (13) Books About Murder (15) Best Horror Mega-List (272) Books Read in 2021 (315) Test List (1) Best of World Literature (112) Western Europe (21) French Books (22) Books Set in Germany (74) Best Gothic Fiction (28) No current Talk conversations about this book. Áhrifamikil saga. Süskind lýsir ævi manns sem fæðist án ilms en er með ógurlega næmt lyktarskin. Um leið er hann afbrigðilegur því alla samkennd vantar í hann í garð samborgara sinna. Hann einsetur sér að útbúa sér ilm líkt og allir aðrir hafa og gerir hvað sem hann getur til þess. Þessi saga fékk meðal annars World Fantasíu verðlaunin 1987 fyrir bestu skáldsögu og er margföld metsölubók auk þess sem hún var kvikmynduð undir heitinu Perfume: The Story of a Murderer árið 2006 og vann til þó nokkurra verðlauna. Nederlandse editie gelezen For more reviews and bookish posts visit: https://www.ManOfLaBook.com Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders) by Patrick Süskind (translated by John E. Woods) takes place in France, telling of a serial murderer with an extraordinary sense of smell, who is chiefly motivated by scents. Mr. Süskind is a German award-winning author and screenwriter, this book is, indeed, the best-selling German novel in history. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born with a gift, a sense of smell very few, if any, posses. This gift has helped him rise from the slums of 1800th Century Paris, to being an apprentice to Giuseppe Baldini, a prominent perfumer. For Grenouille, however, mixing perfumes is not enough and he becomes obsessed with capture scents of objects. The “ultimate” perfume, however is the scent of young, beautiful virgins and the only way to capture it is to kill them. This book was assigned to my teenage daughter at school. She read the first chapter and “hated it”, thought it was weird and equally disgusting. The descriptions of 1800th Century Paris, as well as Grenouille’s circumstances of birth were quite graphic. I decided, however, that I should read Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind along with her, as I usually try to do. I read the first chapter and absolutely loved it. The author holds nothing back, describes the foul stench of Paris, the undeniably hard life, the disgusting existence. “Grenouille’s mother, who was still a young woman, barely in her mid-twenties, and who still was quite pretty and had almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and – except for gout and syphilis and a touch of consumption – suffered from no serious disease, who still hoped to live a while yet, perhaps a good five or ten years, and perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade or some such to bear real children… Grenouille’s mother wished that it were already over.” How can you not love a novel with this sentence in it? Kudos to translator John E. Woods! This book is brilliant, insane and twisted – a grotesque fable, sometimes funny and beautifully written. Even my daughter came to enjoy it after the first chapter. I loved the descriptions of life during that time, something you don’t often see. I’m sure that if we were magically transported to that time period, we wouldn’t be able to breath, to say nothing of being in the presence of other humans due to the stench. Aside from the fantastic narrative, the book is also a lesson the history of perfumery. I also found the religious symbolism, as well as the analytical study of social and economics of the time extremely fascinating. Really good, much better than I was expecting. Immensely readable, funny, unnervingly beguiling. Just read it.
"From start to finish, Perfume is a ridiculously improbable piece of verbose claptrap which the author himself evidently found impossible to take seriously for very long at a time....Since very little happens within Grenouille's mind, and he achieves with other characters no relations capable of development, the book requires a good deal of stuffing to achieve the dimensions of a small novel. The best of this material is several different listings of the materials and procedures involved in perfume making. Suskind has done his homework on the topic....The writing of the book is verbose and theatrical." Just as Grenouille can manufacture a perfume that infallibly conjures up the same response in anyone who senses it, so Mr. Suskind creates words that provide a satisfying illusion of another time. Grenouille the perfumer becomes a kind of novelist, creating phantom objects in the air, but Mr. Suskind himself is a perfumer of language. This is a remarkable debut. A delight to the senses, disturbing serial killer, must read! Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inHas the adaptationHas as a student's study guide
Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odor he cannot capture. No library descriptions found. |
Popular covers
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)833.914 — Literature German and Germanic German fiction Modern period (1900-) 1900-1990 1945-1990LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author.
|
Uno de los libros que más me han atrapado en los últimos tiempos, con unas descripciones crueles y sin ambages sobre lo que Jean-Baptiste hace y se hace que me han resultado muy agradables en su lirismo. Si acaso, opino que el colofón de la historia no se alcanza al final del libro sino hacia la mitad, ya que la tercera y cuarta partes del relato, donde el protagonismo se comparte con personajes sujetos al contrato social, hacen que pierda un poco de fuelle. Me hubiera gustado más haber mantenido el punto de vista de Jean-Baptiste (frío, desapasionado sobre el mundo pero pasional con los olores) en vez de ceder la voz a terceros, pero entiendo que el autor lo necesitara para el contraste narrativo. Por otra parte, quién sabe si, con la misma extensión, se hubiera podido centrar en la historia única del protagonista sin que diferentes censuras hubieran solicitado su cabeza en bandeja de plata.
Debería ser lectura obligada en todas las escuelas del planeta, bien para una causa, bien para la otra. (