Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985)

Mi mayor lamento ante la lectura de este libro es no haberlo devorado de adolescente para que la embriagadora personalidad de Jean-Baptiste Grenouille hubiera influido en la construcción de la persona perfectamente capaz de vivir en sociedad que soy ahora, como hicieran Holden Caulfield, Ignatius J. Reilly o el protagonista de las [b:Memorias del subsuelo|517406|Memorias del subsuelo|Fyodor Dostoyevsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1175468845s/517406.jpg|50717723].

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. ( )

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 ( )

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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.