Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders

I’ve gotta say, this novel is easily one of the most unique, imaginative, and captivating books I’ve ever read.

Spoilers Ahead!

The novel follows the insane yet legendary life of Grenouille, a genius perfumer. He was born under a fishmonger’s cutting board, raised in a foundling home, then sold to a tanner where he worked like a slave. He killed a girl just to inhale her scent. Later, he became an apprentice to a perfume maker and completely turned his business around. He lived in a mountain cave for 7 years, experimented with lethal gases, then ended up in Grasse, where he worked in a perfume shop, murdered 25 girls, and extracted their scents to create the ultimate fragrance. He was sentenced to death but managed to escape, only to return to Paris, where he was literally torn apart and eaten in the cemetery.

"What?" ... yes.

The storytelling is super straightforward, following a stable chronological order - nothing fancy like flashbacks or multiple perspectives. But that’s exactly what makes it feel so unique to me. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of novels that experiment with structure, so this traditional approach actually felt fresh. And Patrick Süskind’s writing is absolutely stunning - clever, precise, rhythmic, and laced with this cool, detached humor. He somehow makes the description of something intangible - scent - feel completely immersive.

This novel made me realize something about life: disappointment is the norm, and getting what you want is the exception. Grenouille embodies this perfectly. He can smell everything in the world - except himself. He dedicates his entire life to mastering perfume, eventually killing 25 women to create the ultimate fragrance. When he finally uses it in front of 10,000 people, they go wild, losing all control in a euphoric frenzy. In that moment, he is worshipped, adored, deified. But instead of feeling victorious, he feels nothing but disgust. He wanted to be loved, but at his peak moment of success, he realizes - he doesn’t love them back. In fact, he hates them. And the only thing that truly satisfies him isn’t love, but hatred.

After a lifetime of chasing his dream, he finally attains it… only to realize it was never what he actually wanted. And isn’t that the most painful truth of life?

I’m not here to analyze capitalism, lovelessness, or the consequences of power. All I know is that this book showed me how fate brutally mocks human desires. No one ever truly gets what they want - we just live with disappointment. That’s the whole truth of life. It’s honestly kind of crushing.

They said the only heroism lies in still loving life after one has looked it squarely in the face. But in moments like this, that kind of optimism just feels… weak.

5 / 5 stars

1.75
Ugh nie cierpię tej książki. Koszmarnie nie moja. A ilość słowa „olfaktorycznie” to naprawdę dramat, ale to już chyba kwestia tłumaczenia. Nic mi się w niej nie podobało :(

I was predisposed to love this book no matter what. I love perfumes. The fact that this book had blood and murder was just a bonus.

For me, perfumes and scents are a visceral thing. I love perfume. I have never been a visual person, my memories are composed of layers of scent.

I remember as a child, growing up in Vietnam, visiting my elderly neighbor's house and having him give me a cup of black tea infused with jasmine. Those jasmines would put the pitiful little star jasmines to shame. They were huge, each petal as wide as a fingernail. White, waxen, and filled with the most beautiful, deep, richly floral scent that even as a 5-year old I could feel was seductive without ever knowing the meaning or the existence of the word.

I remember sleeping with the window open, as the night air was filled with the scents of the flowering trees that grew outside my grandparents' house. I remember the green, earthy smell of the rice paddies where I grew up. I remember the bitter, smoky smell of the pits (so environmentally destructive, but whatever) that my neighbors dug in which they burned wood slowly for months to make a small supply of coal. Not all the smells were pleasant, of course, because hello, I did grow up on a farm, but my memories are built upon scent.

My love of perfume grew when I was a teen. I learned about perfumes, and how they were made. I learned about how flowers were distilled for their scents, an enormous quantity of raw ingredients required for a few precious drops of essential oils. I learned about making aromatic compounds in an organic chemistry lab, and that my beloved scent of jasmine (and tuberose) smelled as beautifully seductive and sexual as it did because it contained a compound called indoles, which smells like poop. Who knew!

I learned that each perfume as a top note, which quickly dissipates, the middle notes, which remains, the base notes, which lingers onto your skin like the touch of a long-gone lover. I learned that musk can smell rank, like sweaty, animalistic sex on top of a slice of Muenster cheese, or it can smell like the warmth of a mother's embrace.

There are certain scents I will never be able to wear again, because one I wore for months, while longing after a guy I thought I could never have. Another I can't smell without wincing, because it reminds me of heartbreak and tears, despite the fact that it came in a rose-colored bottle and smelled like green tea and lemons.

This book is a perfume lover's dream come true. The entire book could have had no mystery at all, and I would still read it and revel in the descriptions alone.

The Summary: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was a bastard, born in 1738 to a syphilitic, consumptive woman working in a stinking fish stall as a gutter. After delivering the unfortunate child, she was promptly arrested for abandoning said child, and hanged.

A most auspicious beginning.

Even in the beginning, his wet nurse---paid for by the state---noticed that something was wrong with Grenouille.

n  “I don’t mean what’s in the diaper. His soil smells, that’s true enough. But it’s the bastard himself, he doesn’t smell.”n

Babies have a smell, some stink, but underneath it, there's always a warm, cuddly smell that even a cold, heartless, child-hating woman such as I can appreciate. Grenouille has no scent.

People notice. His fellow children notice.

n  They could not stand the nonsmell of him. They were afraid of him.n

As a teen, he sought work at a tannery in Paris. Paris is a stinking pit of hell. To Grenouille...it is heaven, with its amalgamation of scents.

n  It was a mixture of human and animal smells, of water and stone and ashes and leather, of soap and fresh-baked bread and eggs boiled in vinegar, of noodles and smoothly polished brass, of sage and ale and tears, of grease and soggy straw and dry straw. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines, only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below.n

Grenouille knew he was not normal, but his obsession for the pursuit of a scent never really gained traction until he committed his first murder, for love of a virgin's scent.

n  ...the sweat of her armpits, the oil in her hair, the fishy odor of her genitals, and smelled it all with the greatest pleasure. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze, the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil, her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies, her skin as apricot blossoms... and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich, so balanced, so magical, that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now, every edifice of odors that he had so playfully created within himself, seemed at once to be utterly meaningless.n

The scent of a living human being that he must commit to memory, that he must capture, in the way a flower collector dries a specimen within parchment, in the way an insect lover kills and pins to a page the very thing he loves.

n  When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits, tore off her dress, and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. He thrust his face to her skin and swept his flared nostrils across her, from belly to breast, to neck, over her face and hair, and back to her belly, down to her genitals, to her thighs and white legs. He smelled her over from head to toe, he gathered up the last fragments of her scent under her chin, in her navel, and in the wrinkles inside her elbow.n

His is an obsessive quest that will lead him to murder again, and again, and again, in this desperate search.

n  Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent, his life would have no meaning.n

This is a book in which the title is completely self-explanatory. It is about a murderer, and his obsessive quest for a perfect perfume. It's something I understand, in my constant search for the Holy Grail of fragrances.

But I have yet to succumb to the urge to murder. >_>

Wow, was this one disturbing. Our main character was born with an incredibly good sense of smell, but without any smell to his own body. He uses these anomalies to work his way from being a detested orphan to a celebrated parfumier, but ultimately, he's looking to acquire power over other people. He uses his gifts in the most grotesque ways to achieve this.

It's so weird describing a book this dark as anything pleasing to the senses, but I suspect that's the whole point. This book will have your nose on alert; the smells described so evocatively are, at turns, repellent and luscious. It's a sensory rollercoaster and it's deeply unsettling.

There are some books which can be called unique. They may be good, bad or indifferent: but their authors strike out from the trodden paths of narrative themes and structure to explore totally new vistas, so that the product becomes unique. Perfume by Patrick Suskind is such a book.

Jean Baptiste Grenouille is "an abominable and gifted personage, in an era which was not lacking in abominable and gifted personages". Born a bastard in the stinking heart of the city of Paris in the eighteenth century under a gutting table, the first cry he utters sends his mother to the scaffold for abandoning an infant. Grenouille grows up by sucking many wet nurses dry, survives the horrendous childhood of an orphan in an age without mercy, and grows up to become a successful perfumer. For this is his unique gift: the child who does not emit any smell himself is blessed with extraordinary olfactory capabilities, which allows him to recognise, separate and catalogue in his mind all the different odours he comes into contact with.

But simple identification is not enough for Jean. He is driven by the insatiable urge to possess any smell he likes for himself; he will move heaven and earth to extract it from its origin, make a perfume out of it and keep it with him. He is not bothered that the object which originates the smell will be destroyed in the process of extraction: he is a "smell-vampire". And like a vampire, it is the smell of virgins which drives him wild. Ultimately, Grenouille's gift and single-minded obsession proves to be the cause of both his uplift and undoing...

Suskind has written a gripping novel which will hook and pull the reader in from the first sentence onwards. However, this is not a simple horror story or thriller: it has got layers of meaning hidden beneath one another which will come out on careful reading.

Jean Baptiste Grenouille is a masterly creation. His insatiable thirst for smells makes him a truly terrifying "collector": one who cannot enjoy his passion the normal way, but must possess the object of his desire (I was reminded of Frederick Clegg in John Fowles' "The Collector") completely. The fact that he lacks a characteristic odour himself enhances his vampiric nature. Also, all the people who profit from him come to a grisly end, like the poor misguided souls who make a pact with the devil.

Joseph Campbell has made the slogan "Follow your bliss" very popular - but how to know whether your bliss is good or bad? I have always wondered about the concept of "negative bliss". Both Gandhi and Hitler could have been said to be following their bliss in different ways. While reading this novel, I was struck by the realisation that the difference is in one's attitude. If one is doing it because one cannot be doing anything else - following one's karma, if you want to put it that way - then it is bliss. But if one is driven by an insatiable need which feeds on itself, one ends up being a vampire. Ultimately, it consumes oneself.

Highly recommended.

4.5⭐️ I wanted a dark gruesome read with a tint of passion. This had so much passion, extremely descriptive and the experience of reading this book was like nothing I've ever known.

Grenouille wasn't even normal as a baby. One of his first nursing maids reported him as having no smell. It's interesting to see the irony that he grew up to be a masterful perfumer who could scent and distinguish thousands of smells and makes/compositions of various scents and learn how to use them to manipulate human emotions.

His obsession with scents leads to murder and hence a beginning of a passionate, visceral reaction to claim these scents and the innocent, clueless lives that wear them.

I just realized that so many literary fiction/classics books I have read lately are made into films. I think this will probably be the most challenging to depict in motion picture. I can't wait to how it's done. ✨️

Original story, well-written, a bit creepy, a lot silly, morality turned on its head for sex and drugs, it put me in mind that it was the Pied Piper in reverse. Not an exact analogy, just what it put in my mind.

I've just downloaded the film. It will be interesting to see how much humanity is allowed Grenouille.

What the actual fuck did I just read