Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

Kenneth Lloyd

Generally speaking, one praises a book for its descriptiveness and the way a novel can paint an image in your imagination. What makes Perfume special, in this sense, is the way surroundings and settings are not described as they appear, but rather as how they smell. And, considering this book is set in 18th century France, the smells can get a little graphic at times.
Enter Grenouille, a child born without any scent of his own but with the supernatural ability to categorize scent in his active memory and “remember” a scent perfectly at will. He has such a sensitive nose that he can smell individual ingredients of a particular bouquet of scent from over a mile away.
Grenouille, due to his lack of scent, has always been ostracized and forgotten by the rest of society, and therein lies one of the more interesting statements of this book. When we label someone as beautiful, ugly, important, worthless, or anything else, scent is an unconscious but crucial component.
Eventually, Grenouille begins to experiment with recreating human scents of varying social status members in order to disguise himself as any component he want to occupy for the day.
My absolute favourite part of this story is the first human scent experiment done by Grenouille. In order to recreate a human olfactory experience, Grenouille mixes some rosemary, sea salt, alcohol, oil, fermenting cheese, and a hint of cat dung.
The excitement truly picks up when Grenouille decides to make the ultimate perfume by harvesting the arousing, intoxicating scent of young, virginal women. Grenouille proves to be a powerful anti-hero, capable of using his lack of a scent to cloak himself and being able to pinpoint the location of his victims (even through porous stone walls) within a mile radius.
Well worth a read if you’re interested in a new take on detailed writing. Also worth reading if you’re at all curious about the olfactory sensations of 18th century France.