Perfume was first published in 1986 and the Viking edition I read in 2001 so it’s been around for a while.
To use 1984 Newspeak, it’s probably a doublepluscilantro book: love it or hate it. In parts Marmite if you're British. it is gross, distasteful, offensive, and horror. It also utterly fascinated me.
This is a historical crime novel set in the 1750s and ‘60s. It opens with a lyrical, even poetic description of the unbelievable stench that pervaded the cities at that time, specifically Paris, and the sources of the stench. My first reaction is that I’ll probably never look at a film set in this period in the same way again. Sure the actors and costumes are beautiful but imagine how they smelled back then.
Our protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, is born in a fish stall amid fish heads and guts and unaccountably survives the horrifying conditions of his early years. Orphans in a Dickens novel lived in luxury compared to Jean-Baptist.
Grenouille is notable for several reasons: first, as mentioned, he survives; second, he has a supernatural sense of smell and is able to catalog and instantly recall all the smells of the city; third, he has no scent of his own, something that makes people around him uneasy. His sense of smell is so acute that he can follow the faintest trace through the crowded city.
His obsession with scents leads him to the shop of a perfumer Giuseppe Baldini, whose glory days are behind him. Baldini sees a way to reclaim his status and employs Jean-Baptiste who quickly takes over the formulation of new scents. For his part, Jean-Baptiste is willing to put up with the trivial matter of concocting scents for the well-to-do as long as he can learn the techniques of the perfumer and pursue the ultimate scent.
After some years as an apprentice, Grenouille convinces Baldini to release him and he heads south to Grasse where they practice a technique to extract the essence of scents that Grenouille believes will enable him to achieve his goal.
Darker themes and horror have strong appeal for me and this well written story certainly satisfies that appeal.
Before I go, further let me bring up the aspect of the book that will most likely offend sensibilities: Grenouille finds that harvesting the essences of virginal young women is how he will develop the ultimate scent, one that would allow him to rule the world if he desired, and he becomes a serial killer. This is where I’d say the story slips into horror and horror has a tradition of exploiting women. As horror, I don’t think the story could have been constructed otherwise and as someone who enjoys well done horror, i.e not the splatter variety, I appreciate how the author carried it off.
Perfume is a translation from German and I think it’s beautifully done. I wouldn’t have known it wasn’t written in English. I'm not sure how to explain it but the words flow across the page even if they are disturbing words.
Süskind moves the plot along nicely and the scene setting, character development, and background information don’t bog down the flow of the narrative. For me, those elements enhance the story. Grenouille is shown as completely amoral and everything and everyone around him are but means for him to achieve his goals. He is not in the least sympathetic and his amoral nature is captured perfectly.
I was most fascinated by the author’s descriptions of the techniques for extracting essences and combining them to form an appealing scent. I don’t know how the techniques are applied today since they aren’t applicable to mass production but I was completely captivated by the process of recognizing, extracting, and layering of scents. This is probably my favorite part.
Perfume was made into a film and it is one of the best book-to-film adaptations I have seen. The screenwriters capture the essence (see what I did there) of the story including the rather amazing scenes at the end. I recommend reading the book first so you can see how expertly the words are translated to action.