Perfume (International Writers)
Reviews
First of all, the unique premise: a boy born without body odor but with an peculiar strong sense of smell. A brilliant book, it’s almost as if you could breathe and smell through the exquisitely written olfactory experience. Set with the background of 18th-century France, when societies reeked of horrendous stench. To describe the plot, it’s painfully torturous yet pleasantly disgusting at the same time. So grotesque. The way it’s written makes you feel and wonder. It’s a truly rich sensory experience, filled with scientific scent-related vocabulary. It won’t please you the way it did to me if you’re not into slow burns and indirect descriptive proses.
I love how Süßkind portrays the hypocrisy of human and their morality, giving you a lens to see how complex people are. It exaggerates many aspects, but I suppose that’s the fun of magical realism. How easily Richis’ feelings could change because of a scent. The whole scene was spectacular, wasn’t it?
The flawed main character, Grenouille—whose name apparently means ‘frog’ in French—is born without body odor and has a quite monstrous face. And no, I never despised him, especially after the ending. I ended up feeling empathetic and pitying him.
(From here onward, this is my interpretation of the book. Expect glimpses of spoilers.)
Grenouille never really knew how to love or what love even was. Abandoned as a child, has suffered through obnoxious and painful sickness, yet he always had the will to survive. His body seemingly became immune to anything—which explains why he could live so easily in the forest—with the result of experiencing the utmost invisibility and loneliness. But, yes, he always survived, even when people wished him to vanish or when people thought he’d die.
He later found pleasure in creating human odors, whether good or bad, because it was the only way he could make people acknowledge his existence. The only way to make people know he’s actually there, with them, as a human.
Brutally murdered 25 women to create the perfect scent to achieve what he desired, yet in the end, it wasn’t what he thought it would be.
I see him as someone who never tried to fit into society. Or more precisely, someone who realized he never really could. He created human odors in the most gruesome way to perfect his own scent. But did it work? He made people acknowledge his “power” through scent, manipulated them, and made them kneel before him. But was that what he truly wanted? All those on him in a different way?
Here, scent is portrayed as the most powerful thing a human can possess, yet for Grenouille—the power to create. All the successful manipulation he did was only because of scents.
The ending proves that despite everything he did: he was still a non-entity, a human without an odor.
In that moment, he understood that the “love” he had envisioned was something entirely different. And with that realization, he let himself be devoured and disappeared utterly from the earth. To be eaten as a whole. Until he became a part of them, the humans.
“When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.”
Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose
was simultaneously enraptured and disgusted when reading this
what a funny little guy
It was a true masterpiece. Without humanity and it seemed like a fever dream, but my god what a dream
Ive never hated the villain the way i had with this book
Barbaric…just gets worse and worse until you think oh it can’t be any more inhumane until it is, all masked under dainty descriptions of scents and the olfactory world.
Reading it and listening to Mozart is op
What a strange, strange book! I’m pretty sure if the writing and descriptions were not as beautiful as they were I would have placed it right back on my book shelf without a second thought. I don’t think I’ve ever squinted so hard at a book, trying to understand why I was enjoying it. Having said that, this is also probably the first time that a ‘horror’ book made me laugh out loud.
Tells the story it wants to tell without wasting any words. Fantastic ending, instantly wanted to reread after finishing.
delicious and delightful
Stinky
Holy fuck? I just finished it and immediately want to re-read it. That's how brilliant the book is... I'll try to keep it brief. The story follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a bastard born in the middle of trash and fish guts. Tossed as an infant from one place to another, unloved and believed to be the devil himself for having no scent at all, and for surviving the harshest of conditions and diseases. One thing for certain is his extraordinary sense of smell. He can tell when milk has gone bad, a worm in an apple, different types of wood. The scents, thousands upon thousands of layers, engulf his very being to the point of obsession. Grenouille proves his sense of smell and becomes a perfumer's apprentice; which comes with the advantage of providing him with the right tools and techniques of preserving and distilling scents from their sources. Grenouille, over time, feels devoid of any human emotions and withdraws himself into his "purple palace" of a heart. He realizes that it isn't enough to obsess over existing scents, but wants to create the most intimate of all scents, the scent of a human. He starts murdering a certain criteria of women and eventually gets caught. A drop of his two-year long perfume saves him from execution. One drop was enough to make him appear god-like and results in a giant orgasm in the crowd of thousands. My only complaint is that this book isn't long enough. It is simply impossible to put down, and I definitely see myself re-reading it less than a month from now. I'm glad the movie made it justice. Also, sorry I couldn't keep it brief. It's just too damn good to skip and it's safe to say that it has become an all-time favorite of mine. Just wow.
what even was that ending! :0
so nauseating, and that ending??? a very strange book, but also beautiful at the same time. the start was so slow tho; took me awhile to finish it. very interesting and cleverly written. didn't enjoy it as much as i expected to
one of the books i consider a masterpiece!
i admittedly only read this because of kurt cobain and unexpectedly, i was surprised by how much i enjoyed this book. a gripping tale about power and how a passion can eventually lead to murder, this book will surely haunt you.
I could smell the pages :P
The writing is exquisite. The plot though. Second half drags quite a bit & tested my patience. The language kept me going I guess. Also as someone whose olfactory functions are majorly impaired by severe allergy, the plot was a bit too much of a stretch for me, may be. 3.5. Why Goodreads doesn't allow for non-whole ratings is beyond me. There's so much that lies between a 3 & a 4.
how peculiar…. 🤔🤔
brilliant from start to finish, easily became a new favorite
“He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.” I vaguely remember watching the movie adaptation of this book but I was too stoned to remember the details, so I decided to read the book. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meanings that scents may have. The story follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an unloved orphan in 18th-century France who is born with an exceptional sense of smell, capable of distinguishing a vast range of scents in the world around him. Perfume is, at its heart, a novel about power. It explores how people obtain power, and then how they keep it or fail at doing so. A combination of religion and bureaucracy is introduced as the first avenue through which an individual can enjoy power. Over the course of the novel, Grenouille moves steadily up the social ladder from the lowest depths of society to a journeyman and finally, in his eyes, a god. Everyone else with whom Grenouille comes in contact is similarly dreaming or actively working on achieving similar types of upward movement, making this type of movement a central concern to the novel. I had a brief fixation on fragrances, so the idea of this book fascinated me simply for the protagonist’s unique characterization. I loved the passages on scent and memory, and how powerful and tied they both are. I loved finding out that this was one of Kurt Cobain's favourite novels. He even wrote a song called, "Scentless Apprentice" after reading it. I can see why this book made such an enduring impression on him. It’s a grotesque fable, sometimes beautiful and gross. I liked how Grenouille’s unique ability to smell things strongly and perceive scent differently isolated him to those around him. Sometimes our unique gifts and perceptions isolate us from other people, and it was interesting seeing that here. This was a simple yet effective tale of obsession and passion. Perfume is a book unlike any I’ve read and it’s not hard to see why this book has become so popular. Despite its dark themes, Perfume is often cited as one of the most beautiful books ever written and I would encourage anyone to give it a go. “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.”
Highlights
Stand in front of that mirror there and regard yourself. You will realize for the first time in your life that you are a human being; not a particularly extraordinary or in any fashion distinguished one, but nevertheless a perfectly acceptable human being.
That is to say, he fought the fear of knowing with the fear of not knowing, and he won the battle, because he knew he had no choice.
And even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing it again, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaic renunciation of both.
One must subdue its evanescence without robbing it of its character—problem of the perfumer’s art.
He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
Sopportava soltanto la luce della luna. La luce della luna non conosceva colori e si limitava a disegnare debolmente i contorni del paesaggio. Ricopriva la campagna di un grigio sporco, e fermava la vita per una notte. Questo mondo come fuso nel piombo, in cui nulla si muoveva tranne il vento, che talvolta passava come un’ombra sui boschi grigi, e in cui nulla viveva se non gli aromi della nuda terra, era l’unico mondo possibile per lui, poiché era simile al mondo della sua anima.
Finora aveva sempre creduto che fosse il mondo in generale, da cui doveva fuggire. Ma non era il mondo, erano gli uomini. Con il mondo - gli sembrava -, con il mondo deserto si poteva convivere.
Non mirava a diventare ricco con la sua arte, non voleva neppure vivere della sua arte, se era possibile vivere diversamente. Voleva esternare ciò che aveva dentro di sé, nient’altro, il suo sé, che per lui valeva molto più di tutto quello che poteva offrire il mondo circostante.
Ma per uscire di scena così discretamente avrebbe dovuto avere un minimo di gentilezza innata, cosa che Grenouille non possedeva. Fin dall'inizio fu un mostro. Si decise a favore della vita per puro dispetto e per pura malvagità.
Il grido dopo la sua nascita, il grido emesso sotto il banco da macello, con il quale aveva dato notizia di sé e aveva portato sua madre al patibolo, non era stato un grido istintivo di pietà e d'amore. Era stato un grido ben meditato, si potrebbe quasi dire lungamente meditato, con cui il neonato si era pronunciato contro l'amore e tuttavia per la vita.
For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who could not defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate.
The latent stench lay lost and unnoticeable under the fresh ingredients; the nauseous part, pampered by the scent of flowers, had become almost interesting; and, strangely enough, there was no putrefaction left to smell, not the least. On the contrary, the perfume seemed to exhale the robust, vivacious scent of life.
“Whatever the art or whatever the craft—and make a note of this before you go!—talent means next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”
He fashioned grotesqueries, only to destroy them again immediately, like a child playing with blocks—inventive and destructive, with no apparent norms for his creativity.
The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water, salt and a cold sun.
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.
“he had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. no longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”
The cry that followed his birth, the cry with which he had brought himself to people’s attention and his mother to the gallows, was not an instinctive cry for sympathy and love. That cry, emitted upon careful consideration, one might almost say upon mature consideration, was the newborn’s decision against love and nevertheless for life. Under the circumstances, the latter was possible only without the former, and had the child demanded both, it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. Of course, it could have grabbed the other possibility open to it and held its peace and thus have chosen the path from birth to death without a detour by way of life, sparing itself and the world a great deal of mischief. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum of native civility, and that Grenouille did not possess. He was an abomination from the start. He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and sheer malice.
Doorgaands roken mensen nietszeggend of belabberd. Kinderen roken flauw, mannen naar pis, naar scherp en kaas, vrouwen naar ranzig vet en rottende vis.
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Summer
Noch in derselben Nacht inspizierte er, wachend erst und dann im Traum, das riesige Trümmerfeld seiner Erinnerung. Er prüfte die Millionen und Abermillionen von Duftbauklötzen und brachte sie in eine systematische Ordnung: Gutes zu Gutem, Schlechtes zu Schlechtem, Feines zu Feinem, Grobes zu Grobem, Gestank zu Gestank, Ambrosisches zu Ambrosischem. Im Verlauf der nächsten Woche wurde diese Ordnung immer feiner, der Katalog der Düfte immer reichhaltiger und differenzierter, die Hierarchie immer deutlicher. Und bald schon konnte er beginnen, die ersten planvollen Geruchsgebäude aufzurichten: Häuser, Mauern, Stufen, Türme, Keller, Zimmer, geheime Gemächer... eine täglich sich erweiternde, täglich sich verschönende und perfekter gefügte innere Festung der herrlichsten Duftkompositionen. Dass am Anfang dieser Herrlichkeit ein Mord gestanden hatte, war ihm, wenn überhaupt bewußt, vollkommen gleichgültig.
Er brauchte nichts zu sehen. Der Geruch führte ihn sicher.
Er stand auf, der große innere Grenouille, wie ein Riese stellte er sich hin, in seiner ganzen Pracht und Größe, herrlich war er anzuschauen -fast schade, dafß ihnkeiner sah! -, und blickte in die Runde, stolz und hoheitsvoll: Ja! Dies war sein Reich! Das einzigartige Grenouillereich! Von ihm, dem einzigartigen Grenouille erschaffen und beherrscht, von ihm verwüstet, wann es ihm gefiel […].
Or why should smoke possess only the name 'smoke’, when from minute to minute, second to second, the amalgam of hundreds of odours mixed iridescently into ever new and charnging unities as the smoke rose from the fire ... or why should earth, land- scape, air - each filled at every step and every breath with yet another odour and thus animated with another identity - still be designated by just those three coarse words.
This book appears on the shelf Time 100 best fantasy books
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