Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

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It's a hit!

A great story - very imaginative. PATRICK SUSKIND'S novel is a book of smells - the odors of history, in fact - and on the first page 18th-century... (show more)

A great story - very imaginative. PATRICK SUSKIND'S novel is a book of smells - the odors of history, in fact - and on the first page 18th-century Paris is anatomized into its component stinks. In its most fetid spot, beside a mephitic cemetery and beneath a fish stall, the hero of ''Perfume,'' Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, is born. But the point, the miraculous point, is that he has no smell at all. He is an orphan whose absence of body odor turns him, also, into an outcast - both damned and blessed, pariah and magician.

Grenouille himself is haunted by smells. He recognizes the odors of separate stones and of the varieties of water; he can locate even the most tremulous perfume from miles away; he can separate the simplest stench into its various elements - that of a human being, for example, being composed of cat feces, cheese and vinegar.

His sole ambition is to become the greatest perfumer of all time; in order to conceal his own lack of odor he creates a perfume that ''did not smell like a scent, but like a human being who gives off a scent.'' He can even manufacture perfumes that create an exhalatory illusion, a phantom object lingering in the air. (show less)

 

 

by Christine Furman

No, it's a flop!

So this book sounded intriguing, but it was a waste of time. It was about a man named Grenouille who had the ability to smell unlike anyone else. ... (show more)

So this book sounded intriguing, but it was a waste of time. It was about a man named Grenouille who had the ability to smell unlike anyone else. He used this smell at first to concoct perfumes that were unimaginable to the normal person, and smelled divine, creating a frenzy in Paris. Well, he got to the point where he couldn't stand the smell of humans, so he fled Paris and lived in a cave for 7 years. After that he realized that he had no smell of his own, so he headed back to humanity to concoct a perfume of inordinate proportion to create an attractiveness all his own. Well, it just so happened that in order to create this perfume he needed to murder 24 young girls in the process, whom he skinned and/or dissected to some degree, eventually burying their hair and clothes in a corner under his house. He was convicted of their murders, yet one drop of his new perfume resulted in an orgy of enormous proportion, and so he was let off and didn't have all of his joints smashed by a sledge hammer. (Ouch!) After this he decided he was done with life, so he wanted to head back to Paris to die. Upon his return to Paris, he drenches himself with his perfume in the center of the city, and everyone around is so frantic to touch him and get a piece of him (because they love him so much) that they end up slashing him to pieces...and DEVOURING his flesh in order to get as close to him as possible. What a way to go. When I got to the ending I just became completely disenchanted with the book. (show less)

 

 

by Julie Dech Hogsett

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  Have you ever smelt Divinity? That smell when summer comes around and it smells like beauty?

  Possibility?
  
  Read on, for this is the theme of this novel.

  This book is about the most deplorable man. He hates every part of Humanity. They stink. Why? Because Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has the Gift of Smell.

  Not just your ordinary smell. No; JB is the "finest nose in Paris".

  Set in pre-rev and post-rev Paris, this book is the embodiment of evocation regarding to scent.

  With a German... (show more)

  Have you ever smelt Divinity? That smell when summer comes around and it smells like beauty?

  Possibility?
  
  Read on, for this is the theme of this novel.

  This book is about the most deplorable man. He hates every part of Humanity. They stink. Why? Because Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has the Gift of Smell.

  Not just your ordinary smell. No; JB is the "finest nose in Paris".

  Set in pre-rev and post-rev Paris, this book is the embodiment of evocation regarding to scent.

  With a German author (?) that has a great translator, this is a book of modern times set in an agricultural world (and for JB a barbaric, misanthropic world) holds it's own of the theatre of the mind. Misanthropic?

  Yes.

  For him.

  For he hates humanity.

  So what does he do? Well, because of his outstanding sense of smell, he is inclined to catalogue every smell he can find. But those most inviting and unknown are those most dangerous.

  Read a text so well written that you will fall in love with the most awful, yet most gifted persons of all time.

  Also read about characters that aren't in the sense "characters", but real people set in an almost "Cornwellian" way of personification.

  Brilliant, evocative, shocking, sensual and lush...

  This book is extremely well crafted. (show less)

   

  by Facebook User on Jul 21, 2009 at 05:50AM

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  When I saw the movie adaption, I was thought, "What a weird, weird little movie." I'd heard about the book before, but you could say I was turned off by the idea of a book about perfume...but then the subtitle came in (the German name was just "Das Parfum") and so I decided to give to book a go. Several years later, I finally read it, and now I have to say: what a weird, weird little book. But if the movie's good, the book is better, even if in just very subtle ways that o... (show more)

  When I saw the movie adaption, I was thought, "What a weird, weird little movie." I'd heard about the book before, but you could say I was turned off by the idea of a book about perfume...but then the subtitle came in (the German name was just "Das Parfum") and so I decided to give to book a go. Several years later, I finally read it, and now I have to say: what a weird, weird little book. But if the movie's good, the book is better, even if in just very subtle ways that only a book can achieve. The book gives a very clear definition of Jean-Baptiste's personality - that of a narcissistic person, unfeeling, unable to feel love, possibly psychotic. He only wants for himself: he's willing to commit a murder, and if confronted with the fact that he killed someone, he thinks the fact that he WANTED something from the murder and justification enough, to himself or to anyone. With that the book gains a bit more of a dimension than the film. Also, the book is very fast and well written, even if it was translated from German. It's not stilted or anything of the sort: you read the prose, and it feels just as the author intended, that you feel as if you're smelling these rancid or beautiful scents. But then again, the book is still weird: even if the story's addictive, the orgy scene...well, enough said... (show less)

   

   

  by John Worth on Dec 03, 2009 at 02:38PM

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