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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Patrick Süskind

Start date: June 1, 2024

Finish date: June 30, 2024

Discussion: Perfume (June)

Why we're reading this: If you are under 18, maybe consider skipping this one. It's ok it won't count against your count.…more
[close] If you are under 18, maybe consider skipping this one. It's ok it won't count against your count.

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Perfume (June)

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By Marie · 1 post · 9 views

last updated Oct 15, 2024 03:22PM

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Jan 11, 2024 a dog who learned to read rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I'm not sure what to make of this ugly, yet compelling, book. At first I really liked it - the creepy, almost demonic, near-mindless protagonist and the lavish, descriptive, sensual prose drew me in so intensely so immediately. Much of the book concerns itself with a kind of softly biblical and magical approach to the senses (the SMELLS) and the desires of mankind, and Grenouille's beastly, machine-like approach to GETTING NEW SMELLS. That, I love.

Later, however, the book loses me in its explora I'm not sure what to make of this ugly, yet compelling, book. At first I really liked it - the creepy, almost demonic, near-mindless protagonist and the lavish, descriptive, sensual prose drew me in so intensely so immediately. Much of the book concerns itself with a kind of softly biblical and magical approach to the senses (the SMELLS) and the desires of mankind, and Grenouille's beastly, machine-like approach to GETTING NEW SMELLS. That, I love.

Later, however, the book loses me in its exploration of murder, debauchery, and uh, wanting to touch your pre-teen daughter's vagina or whatever. While the sensuality of scent is at the core of the novel, it moves into a really uncomfortable space of eroticised child murder. The book seems to want to express something profound about the apparently corruptible nature of people (it ends with (view spoiler), but to me this is really muddied by the way the soon-to-be-killed girls' scents behave in the narrative.

In this book, the smells of young girls seem to be a kind of metaphor for an intrinsic sexual essence they have that drive men to unstoppable lechery. Smells in this book are sort of like souls, forces of personality that act upon the world around them. It's through these SMELLS that they interact with the world, inspiring and captivating the attention of adult men, seemingly universally. It's absolutely nasty, and undercuts all the interesting stuff that's going on here. The father of a prominent murdered girl at one point "curses himself" for being her father and so not being able to "without scruple and full of desire [...] lie down next to her, on her, in her".

Another girl, actually, (view spoiler), is described as having "breasts plump and pert as hard-boiled eggs". Dude.

It's really nasty.

p.s. why do some cover designs show topless adult women when this book is about little girls being killed because they smell so sexy? Come on. ...more

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