false 61407231 128546 343 0140120831 9780140120837 1174 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/343.Perfume_The_Story_of_a_Murderer 3.81 9837 ]]> 39402 3.81 14863 1815 Taking a weird turn... 0 2009-06-28T13:07:58-07:00 947454 154 2009-06-28T13:07:58-07:00 3 0 false Mon Jul 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 28 13:07:46 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 13 10:34:42 -0700 2009
Patrick Suskind’s perfume is one of the hardest to summarize books that I’ve ever come across. It’s about a boy, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born without a scent, who becomes obsessed with creating and capturing the scent of the sweetest human being.

Since it is the story of a murderer, I imagined that this book would be a pretty straightforward life-of, murder and punishment of. And that it would have the gory details and incessant stalking that can be attributed to most killers. I was mostly wrong in assuming this.

After leaving the orphanage that he grew up in, Grenouille works for a tannery, where he survives anthrax and learns about animal skins. While delivering a tanned hide to a perfumer, he impresses him with his sheer talent and begins an internship. He moves through his life like a parasite, from host to host, taking what he needs from each individual before moving on. All of his efforts and time spent learning are so that he can eventually acquire the perfect human scent (which turns out to be that of red or raven-haired beautiful virgins).

As he goes from place to place, he leaves a trail of death in his wake. Everyone from the woman who raised him to the fellow journeyman that hired him dies. And in the most unpleasant way.

Suskind does a superb job of immersing the reader in 1800’s France, making the filth of the streets and despicable working conditions come to life. He does an even better job of talking about the girls that Grenouille kills. In that, he doesn’t talk about them much. We see each virginal sacrifice as a scent.

Of our senses, scent is most likely to help us recall a memory, reminding us of a time long ago, that we may have forgotten. Suskind’s exploration of our olfactory receptors was very intriguing. However, were I Suskind, I wouldn’t have quite ended it the way he did. It didn’t make me like the story less, but it wasn’t where I wanted it to go.

"It was as if he were an autodidact possessed of a huge vocabulary of odours that enabled him to form at will great numbers of smelled sentences – and at an age when other children stammer words, so painfully drummed into them, to formulate their first very inadequate sentences describing the world."

*

"The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water, salt and a cold sun. It had a simple smell, the sea, but at the same time it smelled immense and unique, so much so that Grenouille hesitated to dissect the odours into fishy, salty, watery, seaweedy, fresh-airy, and so on. He preferred to leave the smell of the sea blended together, preserving it as a unit in his memory, relishing it whole."]]>