Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8044 in Books
• Published on: 1989-01-26
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Synopsis
Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odor he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill.

Customer Reviews

A book to savour
It's an extraordinary book. When a book is a classic, you just know it right there. This one is. It is beautifully written and very original. I read it in Russian and Dutch and loved both translations. It may sound elitist, but I believe, one has to be an aesthete to be able to appreciate this book. Those who like dynamic page turners will be disappointed. It's a book to savour.

Bit of a stinker
'Magic Realism' as a writing style always hovvers on the boundary between the hyperreal and the hopelessly unreal. If a book falls into the latter category then only enormous wit and verve can save it.

Sadly Perfume is Magic Realism at its most depressing. It is hopelessly unreal: its central character undertakes a life journey that makes nonsense of time, place and plot. But then it has no wit or verve either: beyond the lively opening it is a ploddingly pendantic exercise in showing just how much research the author has undertaken on the subject of scent.

The key problem however is the book's hero - or anti-hero as Suskind would probably prefer. He is so repulsive, so unlikeable, so uninteresting. Worse still, he does not possess the intriguing back story or psychological depth that can sometimes lead us to sympathise with even the most unattractive characters. Not for one moment did I care what happened to him or why. And that's not a good basis for any story.

What Suskind has here is a clever short story or novella which is so overstretched that his limitations as a writer become visible. The opening is beguiling and atmospheric, and the premise intriguing; the ending is clever and well disguised. If he had compressed what sits in between by two-thirds, perhaps the whole piece - if no more real - would at least have had some magic.

Oh gosh
Am I the only person in the world who didn't like this book? I cannot imagine a film being made from it. I did like the way it started and the poor boy who was unloved by all but, as for the rest of the book, I felt it was awful.