Review: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

The Plot

 

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind is a contemporary fiction novel which follows the life of an extraordinary human being in 18^th century France who is ‘gifted’ with extreme olfactory capabilities - a.k.a the ultimate sense of smell. Parisian Jean-Baptise Grenouille grows up as an orphan and in later life is employed in Giuseppe Baldini’s store - one of the best perfumers in Paris- where he learns perfuming skills that will help him to fulfil his desires later on in the novel.

Indeed, it sounds fairly moderate so far but, as indicated in the title, there is a lot more to it. Grenouille’s detest for humanity, the severity of his gift and his desire to create the most powerful and exquisite perfumes, through preserving the world’s most beautiful scents, obscure his understanding of morality.

Good points

The novel has been translated from German which is something that I must commend since I have never written a book with such exquisite and challenging vocabulary. Additionally, although very obscure, I must also commend the author’s imagination. The descriptions are superb and there is a lot of depth to the characters; not only do we follow the life of the protagonist but Süskind also includes the back stories of the significant characters, enhancing the reader’s understanding and appreciation of them. And finally, as I am definitely one of those people who want to chuck books across the room when painfully left with a cliff-hanger at the end of the story without any promise of a sequel, I was very grateful when Süskind wrote a strong, concrete ending.

Bad points

If you are a reader who likes a fast-moving, progressive plotline then I cannot guarantee that you will enjoy Perfume. Süskind focuses a lot on each character and there are long descriptions of many of the scenes and the characters feelings. Süskind is also quite forward with his descriptions and the lack of euphemism throughout doesn’t bode well with the slightly erotic areas of the novel.

Summary

My general reading taste is teen-fiction so at first I found the novel really quite strange due to its uniqueness and obscurities. But, even though it was way out of my comfort zone this was the very reason for why I enjoyed it. It was a satisfying read and it was refreshing to experience a completely different storyline to the typical boy-meets-girl plot that I am used to.

Rating = 4 stars

Additional points

Although satisfied with the read I was most surprised, due its obscure nature, when I discovered that the novel had been made into a film and even more so when I discovered that the movie was a well-known adaption including the legendary actors Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman, notwithstanding the up-and-coming star Ben Whishaw (Grenouille) who played Q in the recent Bond film, Skyfall. After watching the trailer and reading the film’s plot on Wikipedia I concluded that this might suit some people better than the book as the story has definitely been ‘movie-fied,’ so to speak. If you watch the film then you will not have to endure the long novel’s extensive descriptions. However, the film will, undoubtedly, make the book’s graphic scenes much more graphic as they will be visual. Plus, one will not be able to truly appreciate the cleverly written, ugly, evil and fascinating character that is Grenouille.