Review by ish7 - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

ish7 's review for:

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

4.5

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This has to be the most lush, sumptuous writing I have read in a very long time. A whole book brimming with descriptions of scents and it never got old. I am mindful that this is a translation and I read the 1986 John E. Woods' English translation which I loved a lot. Parts three and four particularly appealed to me. Grenouille is a fascinating character, he is like a blank slate with a single-minded focus on smell, the sense that permeates and defines his whole world. He lacks morality. He is not immoral, he is amoral. Smell is one of our oldest, most primitive scents and indeed Grenouille is like a creature of olde who has somehow been birthed into a modern human society. The book's ending is dark, macabre and almost camp. It has orgies and incest and cannibalism and murder. Weird, grotesque, fragrant, repugnant, strange, creepy and lovely.

Content Warnings