Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Surprisingly good.

I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. The closest literary comparison I can make is The Picture of Dorian Gray, though that hardly does it justice as there are no true similarities in terms of plot, merely the dark obsession with aesthetics.

Süskind's writing style is smooth, there is an abundance of detail but it never feels wordy or hard to follow.

This is a book I would re-read, and would definitely recommend.

cracking

Wow, what a fantastic end to a page turning novel. Although a little stale in places, and weirder in others, Suskind paints a vivid picture of Jeans life, or lack thereof.

It's a book about social isolation and although brilliance lay beneath him, and was unstoppable at times in his pursuits, ultimately did not know what to do with this great power. Although conniving and careful, he didn't understand that he was commit murders. He didn't love, didn't see “people”.

Briefly, life plans are touched on. Despite Jean having plans to head directly to Grasse, plans that had been set for years. But then he changed them quickly based on his desires and spent 7 years in a cave. So too, life plans are set but often not given the freedom to change (as they always do).

I read this mainly as it was Kurt Cobains favourite book (or so they say).

A clear sign of a really great book is when suggesting it resembles a drug deal. With other books you praise the character development, the plot, the use of language, the deeper meaning, but with something as intoxicating as the Perfume by Patrick Süskind, you're reduced to oh man, it's fu***** great, trust me, you have to try it, probably with a crazy look that would make your mother worry about the kind of things you do in your spare time.

link to full review

it was something different. don't really know what to say other than i'd like to smell the perfume Grenouille made.

En verdad creí que en el libro habría cambios significativos con respecto a la película, pero con excepción del episodio de la cueva y el fluido letal, lo demás resulta demasiado predecible para quienes ya habíamos visto el filme.

A mi parecer el atributo que hace destacar al libro por encima de la película, es el detalle con el que su autor describe los aromas. Esto puede ser un valor agregado si eres alguien que conoce y disfruta de los aromas, en mi caso no lo fue porque para un simple mortal como yo, es complejo imaginarse a que huele, por ejemplo, la mezcla de flores de azahar y almizcle. Estoy acostumbrado a hacer uso de mi imaginario para evocar paisajes, personas, cosas visuales pues, pero ¿olores?, sin duda es un experimento que valdría la pena poner a prueba.

Solía pensar que el final de la película era una metáfora de algo más solemne, y que en el libro esto se explicaría con detenimiento, sin embargo, resultó ser más literal de lo que imaginaba, en efecto, Grenouille regresa al barrio donde nació y es devorado por los vagos que rondaban la zona.
En conclusión, es una gran novela, seguro la habría disfrutado más de no haber visto el filme primero, pero que se le va hacer.

3,5

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.

This was one of the most clever tales I've had the fortune of reading - but also one of the most contrived.
From the very beginning, the author makes it clear that Grenouille, the antagonist, is nothing to root for - he has no semblance of a conscience, for starters. And while you want to explore such an original character further (a person with a supernatural sense of smell), his character development is diluted in favor of showing the reader how perfumes are made, imitated, and even reverse-engineered - which tends to get on your nerves after a while.
If you can stand a linear narrative, and don't mind reading up on a completely new subject (because let's be honest - who has ever read up on how, exactly, the smell of jasmine flowers is imbibed through oils?), then this book is a must read. The plot idea alone is worthy of praise - the plot is just icing on the cake.

This is an extremely original story. The amount of research that must have gone into it is probably incredible. The story is just cute, not particularly deep and only some of the characters are well developed, while others are pretty shallow and their actions don't really seem well motivated.

This has been on my list for a while and I'm so happy that I made it a priority. I enjoyed this book quite a lot.

More like 3.5???
I really don't know how I feel about this book. I liked it so much and kind of hated it at the same time. But it was a decent and very dark book.

This book will haunt me deeply for a long time. This book in equal measures disgusted and fascinated me. The descriptions of scent in this novel were so intoxicating and visceral and I loved the originality of using the sense of smell as the frame through which to feed through the story. I loved how when reading this book it had elements of Lolita and Frankenstein, both books I really enjoyed! This book is dark and at times unnerving but I loved the skill of Suskind's writing that he could evoke uneasiness and morbid fascination from his readers. I hungrily devoured this book within two days and found it such an easy and gripping read. I can understand how people might have found the ending a slightly exaggerated ending and the beginning rather slow. However I felt the book was a really well fleshed out story that explained the character and motives of Grenouille properly. A perfectly filled in plot that defies a genre. A guilty yet indulgent read for me. I would highly recommend!

Devido ao subtítulo do livro “história de um assassino”, pensei que se tratasse de um serial killer sem escrúpulos todavia apercebi-me que não seria assim nas primeiras páginas do livro.
Esta obra retrata a vida de Grenouille e descreve detalhadamente todos os aromas para que o leitor entenda a intelectualidade desta personagem.
Ambas as situações que relatei, fiizeram com que a leitura não fosse aprazível e que se tornasse fastigante.

مع أني أحسست بالملل في بعض أجزاء الرواية عند تعمق الكاتب في الحديث عن طبيعة الروائح و الإسهاب في ذكر ما كل يقع تحت الأنف منها ، إلا أنني أحببت القصة ، فهي فريدة من نوعها بالنسبة للكتب التي قرأتها من قبل .
الغريب أنني لم أشعر بالحقد و الكره تجاه هذا القاتل إطلاقاً، بالعكس فخلال كل فصول الرواية كنت أشعر بما في داخله من نقص و مرض نفسي جعلني أشعر بالشفقة عليه لا أكثر. أجمل ما في القصة كان مشهد المحاكمة و الصلب الذي لم يتم !، وهذا ما أتوق إلى مشاهدته في الفلم المقتبس من الرواية.خاتمة القصة رائعة و غير متوقعة وهي ما رفع من مستوى الرواية في نظري.

I didn't really enjoy this book at all. The pace was all over the place, the story itself was unbelievable in the extreme, and although I know you aren't meant to like the main character, I didn't even feel that he was well written. The ending was... weird, and not really in keeping with the rest of the story, and a bit of an anti-climax.

I'm just generally disappointed! I've seen there are so many good reviews... did I miss something key?? I think I must have.

It gets two stars as I apparently liked it enough to keep reading.

It's tough to describe this book. It's creepy and equally as beautiful for its prose. The story tells of an orphan (never loved by anyone – his mother birthed him in a fish stall and left him for dead) who was born w/o a scent of his own but was born, however, with a superhuman sense of smell. He grows up to work in several perfume shops learning how to extract the essence of various flowers. Later he uses these techniques to experiment and kills small animals for their oils in hopes to create a human-like scent for himself. Once he catches a whiff of what he thinks to be the most glorious scent in the world, that of a young virgin, Jean-Baptiste can't help but to kill the girls so that he can bottle their essence forever. He wants to make their scents his own so that he too can be loved and embraced by the people of Paris. The imagery is captivating. At times the author goes into a bit too much detail about something or other, but it does not distract from the book at all. The story ends with a bit of a twist. I give this 3.50 to 4 stars.

Not really a fan. The book is good enough, but the wording and structure are not terribly important. The real strength is the continued use of smell, obviously.

Still, reading it in Paris was a brilliant idea...

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille - human or monster? Both? Just when I found myself feeling sympathetic to this young man who grew up without human kindness, the monster side of him would emerge and I could sense his scorn for people he fooled with his pretense of humanity. This was a beautifully written book about the importance of smell that we all take for granted and how one man with an incredible gift took advantage of people.

This was a re-read for me, having read it around 2005. I recalled enjoying it, enjoying the writing which was overwhelmingly descriptive of the scents and odours throughout the book, and enjoying the dark character of Grenouille.

Reading it again some fifteen years later was equally enjoyable, and I retained the four stars I awarded it when I joined Goodreads (which, lets face it, is just an estimation based on recollection of lots of books).

I don't intend to plot outline - there are loads of reviews to do that, so there really is no need. I will touch on things I thought well done...

The amount of research the author did to describe the methods and techniques used in the tannery and the perfumers was impressive. It was very detailed, and as Grenouille learned, so did we as readers. N0t that I would be in a position to criticise, but it seemed very legitimate and accurately described.

The writing of Grenouille was clever - he was presented as a genius, a psychopath and a repellent man, but all the more fascinating for it. We see his disdain for mankind, his feelings of superiority, and his rapid learning, and his manipulations using scent. Either the translation is brilliant, or the writing and translation are very good!

And one minor quibble - long paragraphs. I am generally not a fan of long paragraphs, and some of them in this book get a bit long-winded. I don't resent them when they suit the tone (which most of them do) - for example the breathless learning of something that take effort to explain, but long for the want of some editorial tidying I dislike. Only a minor quibble here though.

And so to the ending (no spoilers), while it was sudden and I see other reviewers were disappointed, I thought it fitting, and ultimately Grenouille achieves all he can imagine.

Some quotes I enjoyed:

In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.-He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.-In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master's wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, so there was no human activity,either destructive or constructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life, that was not accompanied by stench.