Perfume: The Story of a Murderer in Read a book from each country

Dec 05, 2014 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it

Shelves: around-the-world, location-france, read2014

This novel will be best appreciated by people who enjoy long descriptive passages in between their morbid and disturbing characters. Maybe a bit like if Patricia Highsmith lived in a rose garden.

17 likes · Like · see review

Oct 03, 2008 martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: german-lit, classics

Forget the rather poor film adaptation, read the novel. It's way, way better! Sad to say I read it in English rather than German but the translation is good and the story retains its ability to repel and fascinate at one and the same time.

Grenouille is a character nobody could love, semi-human in many ways but with an incredible gift for literally sniffing out the beautiful, the mysterious and the magical that leads him eventually to barbarity and crime. Morality does not really play a role in t ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 19, 2010 Tracy rated it really liked it

Shelves: for-fun, for-work

I'm forever telling my students that old paintings look beautiful, but think of the smells. We forget exactly how sanitized our modern world is. Love that Suskind can write about smells most overlook...

That being said, I did enjoy this book. The reviews on here remind me of the reviews of Lolita. People either love it or hate it, and there is much debate over the writing style. Personally, I loved the style and sentence structure in this novel. I love the story, the dysfunction, and the psycholo ...more

Like · see review

Sep 10, 2007 Duc is currently reading it · review of another edition

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it."
— Patrick Süskind (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer)
Thus the novel persuades and pervades through our imagination the smell.
Why do I want to read this book?
I want to read it to see how the author transcribe a scent on to words.
One incident wh "Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it."
— Patrick Süskind (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer)
Thus the novel persuades and pervades through our imagination the smell.
Why do I want to read this book?
I want to read it to see how the author transcribe a scent on to words.
One incident which stood out. It was when Grenouille pays the prostitute to get her scent. Well this explains a lot and it makes the narrative plausible and it makes his motives for murder clear. The prostitute is freaked out by the scrapper and the lard that he applies to extract her scent. If she would have let him do it then he would not have murder other girls. Well, he was to get a scent of the virgins. She was just his test subject. So I suppose that eventually he would murder. It does explain that it is not normal social behavior. So even if he advertised for girls to contribute their scent, they would not have. Besides, he murders her on impulse because he is obsessive about the experiment.
He is only concern with the scent and not even the physical touch.
So this is more then a story, and much more then just murders. It bring in moral questions. In searching for art, science, and perfection, he has committed these crimes. Was there a better way to extract this? In those times, it was not possible it seems.
His motive is more then just money, fame, and power. It was his mere curiosity and he pursuit of the purest and his obsessiveness. To him and to the writer, the scent is the essence: the soul of a thing, or a man or a woman. He had a gift for this sense. He is a freak of nature, like most genius who bares the talent or gift, it is a burden. So this is how the author makes the reader sympathize for the criminal. We, the reader, don't know much about the virgin victims, except for the final precious 13th victim, she has a bit of a story.
I might add here that the writer has a gift as well. Sometimes, he is a freak and is obsessive about certain ideas, theme, and words. The novel is the way he conducts the experiment. The way he can distill smell onto the page is remarkable. Humanity is foul.
Interestingly, Grenouille has no body scent of his own. In some cultures, it is said that the Devil does not have a scent. It is also believed that women possess a keener faculty for the senses and uses this power to their persuasion/seduction. It is believed that animals, and humans attract each other through pheromones. It is one of the sense that is very hard to measure and not debilitating, not like sight or sound which we depend more for survival, although, taste of food arrives with the smell of it and adds to the pleasure.
It is a searching for something elusive. Once captured, our hero Grenouille seems dissatisfied. ...more

Like · see review

Feb 02, 2009 Jessica rated it liked it

Shelves: adult-fiction, 2011

Bizarre and not quite what I expected. For those reading the book's synopsis and questioning the gruesome factor, it's more psychological than gory. ...more

Like · see review