"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" is a staple in German literature, and understandably so, given its popularity and excellent writing. This literary masterpiece is written on a very unique premise; an eccentric, solitary, young man who possesses a remarkable sense of smell and who embarks on a mission to create the most heavenly scent by using the corpses of young virgin women. The premise alone, is interesting, but the idea that someone could navigate their way through the world, reach a status of royalty, and select murder victims all by using the most under appreciated sense (smell), is darkly fascinating. This gothic tale - with its over running theme of scent and odor - juxtaposes beauty and the grotesque, and it's underlying message is that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

I feel strangely about this book because it's hard for me to enjoy a narrative that centers such an abhorrent, disgusting character. And for the most part, I had no interest in Grenouille's journey nor any other part of the plot. But the writing - oh, the writing. I love reading perfume reviews in my spare time and I love the art of smelling. And because of Suskind's truly delicious descriptions of all the scents that Grenouille's talented nose could pick out, I have to give this a solid 4/5.

Paris, city of 1000 lights.  City of infinite smells.  A tick, a toad, a spider, a gnome.  Set in the 1700's.  A man who can see in the dark, who revels in the moonlight, and has a nose to rival the most polished makers of perfumes.  A tale for the senses, and different from anything I have ever read.

A cross between The Silence of the Lambs and a period drama. That's how I would describe Perfume, the great German classic of the 1980s. Basically, it's an eighteenth-century murder story, except that it doesn't focus on the victims and the hunt for the killer, but rather emphasises the life and times of the murderer, who is an unusual protagonist to say the least.

Perfume tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an eighteenth-century Parisian with a unique gift: a prodigiously well-developed olfactory sense which allows him to recognise pretty much any scent or smell. After a childhood full of hardship, he is apprenticed to a perfumier who teaches him all he knows about distilling smells. Unbeknownst to the perfumier, however, Grenouille isn't in it for the fashionable perfumes. Rather than extracting scents from flowers and petals, he wishes to extract smells from living objects -- more specifically, from the beautiful virgins he comes across every now and then, who smell like heaven to him. And so he plies his trade, hoping to learn that elusive trick which will enable him to trap the scents of the lovely young ladies he covets from afar, so that he can create the perfume he really wants -- essence of maiden.

Perfume is a riveting look into the mind of an obsessed man -- a murderer whose immorality and eccentricity put him on a par with Thomas Harris' unforgettable serial killers. As unlikeable and depraved as Grenouille is, you almost sympathise with him. He may be a monomaniac, but his perseverance and creativity and the originality of his quest are such you almost wish him to succeed, or at least to see how far he will get before he gets caught. Suskind does such a great job describing his obsession that you simply keep turning the pages, waiting to see what fate has in store for this horrible yet ever so original murderer.

The writing on display is beautiful. A tremendous lot of research went into Perfume, and it shows. The descriptions of the various perfume-making techniques are rich, detailed and thoroughly impressive. Suskind frequently devotes whole pages to explanations of parfumiers' secrets; it is testimony to the quality of his writing that they never get tedious. He also does a marvellous job evoking the odours of Grenouille's world and the way in which they affect him. With its many powerful descriptions of odours (both pleasant and unpleasant), the book is a veritable smellscape which makes you increasingly aware of the smells surrounding you. However, it is not without its problems. The middle chapters are a bit of a drag and the ending is so over the top that many readers will be put off by it. I was a bit put off by it myself, yet I can see why Suskind went for the grotesque touch. For all its scientific detail, Perfume is essentially a fairy tale, and anything but a strange ending would have been a betrayal. It's weird, but if you read the story as if it were fairy tale, the ending makes sense. It's a fairy tale with a fairy-tale ending, and then some.

Bizarre and unusual tale set in eighteenth century France. Grenouille is born without an odour and becomes obsessed with odours. He gradually moves through the novel learning all there is to know about perfume and scent and how to make, extract and distill it. Unfortunatley Grenouille is completely amoral with no feeling for anyone else. The story becomes increasingly bizarre and the ending is strange; difficult to stomach you might say!
It is a well written, beautifully crafted with rich language and an empty heart. Take it out of its historical context and stick it in a modern city and what do you have. Scent obsessed loner murders 26 young girls for their hair and scent; we do not know their names (apart from one), they are merely victims; all very young. None of the victims are male and there are no significant female characters in the book (Ok. I know teenage boys don't smell that sweet! But I did wonder at Grenouille choosing young girls as he didn't seem to find any odour offensive). A heart warming story of a serial killer, who objectifies women. American Psycho anyone!!
As you may have guessed I didn't find the story all that convincing and as for the orgy at the end, I think the author ran out of ideas; or possibly forgot himself and thought he was writing for Playboy. Nevertheless, it passed a wet afternoon and there were a few laugh out loud moments (not entirely sure they were meant to be funny though!)

Because sometimes you just have to read about an 17th century perfumer who may or may not be the Anti Christ and goes on a killing spree, before starting aa giant omnisexual fuckfest and being voluntarily cannabilized.

Ah literature. That's why I read you, the class. The class.

n  n   

In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.

n  n So begins this tale of the life and misadventures of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Jean-Basptiste was born with no smell, but he has an elevated gift of the olfactory inclination. n  

“And there you have it! That is a clear sign. If he were possessed by the devil, then he would have to stink.”

n So gifted was he, in fact, that he could smell people coming from a distance away and his warder believed Jean-Baptiste to be psychic. Honestly, with the fates he could accomplish, I'm surprised he wasn't supernatural.

Jean-Baptiste is sold to a tanner at the age of 11 where he perfects his gift of scent. A lot happens that gets lost in all the mire I was enduring just to get to the murders. At this point, he kills one young virgin girl to preserve her scent forever. Then, he does nothing for years until he goes to work at a perfumery.

While there, he is basically a Gary Stu of the perfume makers. An inexperienced savant who can somehow concoct the perfect perfume, measurements and all, just by his fucking nose. Lord, spare me. I found this book interesting at first. If inappropriately funny. It's very immersive. I can't speak to its accuracy regarding 18th century France but unlike that heaping pile of shit Addie LaRue, I actually felt like I was in 18th century France. But what this book likes to tell you is that Jean-Baptiste has a gifted nose. He also had a supernatural power of healing.

n  In the course of his childhood he survived the measles, dysentery, chicken pox, cholera, a twenty-foot fall into a well, and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest.n

The book tries to say that he survives all his maladies through spite and malice. Lol ok.

I don't really know what to make of this book. It's infuriating because it felt like there was so much more hiding under the surface. It seemed to promise me the disgusting pleasure of popping a ripe pimple but really it was an itch that disappeared. We spend so much time following Jean-Baptiste trying to recreate the scents of innocuous objects like brass doorknobs or maggots. The whole time I had to keep asking myself, where are all the murders.

After he spends 7 years without proper food and water, subsisting on drops from a wet rock, moss, frogs and lizards, Jean Bapstiste rejoins civilisation to dandy around with some charlatan who was selling a bogus treatment. By this stage I was just annoyed. Jean does start a string of murders where he is leading up to his ultimate prize. The most beautiful Laure. A virginal beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who was virginal and beautiful. It is all we know about her. The book won't let you forget. The narrator, the girl's father, Jean-Baptiste won't fucking shut up about how she's such a beautiful fucking virgin. And oh my god, I was ready to tear my hair out.

The book also fails to follow Jean-Baptiste when he killed 24 girls to practise how to capture their scents and perfect how he'll get Laure's scent. No, we had to be with him in a cave when he would blow his wad because he had a wet dream about the first girl he killed. We had to follow him when he was trying to recreate the scents of inconsequential items like wood or coins. We had to follow him when he clubbed a puppy to death. But when he's actually terrorising the residents of a remote French village, literally the most interesting part of the story, we get fleeting accounts from the villagers.

The final conflict is so lackluster, it makes you wonder if Suskind had ran out of cocaine when he was writing it. The prose is lazy, the suspense dead, and the ending meaningless. This may be the worst book about a serial killer I've ever read which is funny because it damn near sapped me of my will to live.

Scent is such an underestimated, but oh so powerful sense. I love perfumes, but I have been wearing the same one since I was about fifteen because I was never able to find another one that “fit” with my skin and body chemistry as well as this one does. When my husband and I were dating and living in different neighborhoods, I constantly stole his sweaty t-shirts to sleep in because they smelled like him. When we cleaned out my grandmother’s house after she passed away, I opened a bottle of her Fleurs de Provence bubble bath and cried uncontrollably for an hour because that scent had brought back memories of childhood sleepovers with the brutality of a slap in the face.

So when I heard of this book, about a man with a supernaturally powerful olfactory sense, who’s obsession with the scent of a lovely red-headed virgin drives him to murder, I knew I had to read it.

Suskind’s prose is incredibly sensual and seductive. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a horrible psychopath of a character, but there is something darkly fascinating about him that pulls the reader in. He’s greedy, calculating, patient, gifted with the ability to identify and catalogue odours in his mind the way some artists do with colors. His survival was unlikely: abandoned by his mother from his birth under a fish stall, mistreated by wet-nurses, raised in an awful orphanage, worked almost to exhaustion in tanneries… And yet he endures to learn the fine art of perfumery, how to extract smells from flowers and other less orthodox objects – all of this with the ultimate goal of capturing the smell of the loveliest woman in France…

I loved this bizarre, gorgeously written romp thought 17th century France, the detailed descriptions of smells, from the most putrid garbage dumps of Paris to the pure and delicate flower fields of Grasse - and the way Suskind manages to make this story both a feast for the senses and repulsive at the same time. I’m not sure I would describe this novel as a horror story, even with such an evil main character as Grenouille: I feel like this book can be compared to a blend of Poe and Dickens, with just a touch of Nabokov thrown in there. This story of obsession and madness is dark and creepy, but there are also moments of absurd humour (Grenouille’s master, Giuseppe Baldini, is utterly ridiculous and hilarious) and fascinating information about the process of making perfume, distilling essences and so on. The completely over-the-top finale I found to be absolutely fitting: a grotesque ending for a depraved creature.

This is a creepy but elegant little book that I highly recommend for fans of gothic and historical fiction, and people who just like good, ornate writing.

قرأتها و شاهدتها فيلما ..

كاتب متميز فكر خارج الصندوق و أنتج فكرة عجيبه لا أدري من أي مكان جاء بها من تلك الوديان البعيده التي يأتي للشعراء و الكتاب جميعا منها الإلهام ..

A master piece ..

لطالما احببت الأعمال الفنية اللتي تترك في فمك مذاقا ما ..
التي لا تعود الحياة بعدها كما كانت , منها العطر ..

رأيت أثناء قرائتي البطل طفلا يشم كل شئ في جشع
أشفقت عليه طفلا بالرغم من نفور جميع من حوله منه..
و هو يقوم بخلط العطور بدون قواعد .. رأيته و هو يري الفتاه قتيلته الأولي في منامه .. يتذكر شذاها , يحاول الإمساك به الإحتفاظ به للأبد و من ثم يراه كالزئبق ينسل من بين يديه ... فيصرخ
و يستيقظ

رأيت ذلك الجنون في عينيه و هو يستخلص مكونات سحره , العطر ..

انتهيت من قرائتها و من ثم شاهدتها فيلما , كان أفضل مما توقعت من الأفلام ألا تكون بمستوي الروايات دوما ..

النهايه رائعه ..

عمل لن أمل من إعادة قرائته , و رؤيته علي الشاشه ..



العطر ..
أنصح بها بشدة , علي مسئوليتي الشخصية :))

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.

I enjoyed the weirdness of this novel, and the author's willingness to follow through on what is a strange, but very original premise. Through immersion in scent, Süskind is able to create entirely new, evocative landscapes and unique perspectives. But he seems to have plundered and exhausted this rich seam fairly early on, and rather than developing the story and characters in a meaningful way, he unfortunately favours repetition and increasingly ridiculous plots.

Perfume is a memorable novel, and there were many elements I enjoyed. But I wish the protagonist were a more substantial character, and I would have liked to see a bit more depth to the story, rather than a sequence of disposable characters and predictable events culminating in an absurd, meaningless ending.

(I also found the writing style very grating, though with a translation you can never tell whose fault that is.)

Releer un libro vale la pena.

Hay dos tipos de lectores: Quienes no repiten un libro, porque afirman que tienen una vida muy corta; y quienes les gusta repetir sus libros favoritos para volver a disfrutarlos y hallar más conclusiones. Yo soy parte del segundo grupo. El Perfume, es un libro muy especial para mí. Hace varios años mi hermana pidió prestado este libro en la biblioteca; ella no lo leyó, pero tras verme sin nada que hacer me lo ofreció para que me entretuviera. Siempre me ha gustado leer, pero honestamente en ese tiempo no estaba tan interesado en este mundo de libros como actualmente. Sin embargo, en ese momento tomé este libro, lo leí y me fascino completamente. Fue un libro que me motivo a interesarme seriamente por este lindo pasatiempo. Pasaron los años y hace unos meses una idea invadió mi mente: Dudaba si este libro era tan bueno como lo recordaba o simplemente había sido inexperiencia por no haber leído mucho. Para resolver esta duda entonces decidí releerlo; aunque no les miento, tenía miedo de descubrir que no fuera tan bueno como me pareció la primera vez. Pero esos miedos ya quedaron atrás, efectivamente el libro es espectacular y me gustó de inicio a fin; de hecho creo que disfruté más la relectura.

¿Qué es lo que más me gustó? Sin ninguna duda su personaje principal: Jean Baptiste Grenouille. Grenouille es un ser que no emana olor de su cuerpo por lo que le produce asco a todas las personas que lo conocen. Sin embargo, tiene una habilidad extraordinaria: Su desarrollado sentido del olfato. Su vida gira en torno a los olores. Es el protagonista y el villano a la vez. Odiado por muchos lectores por su comportamiento enfermo y por ser un asesino; para mí, es un genio en todo el sentido de la palabra porque hace lo que ningún otro ser podrá hacer: Usar sus habilidades para crear los mejores perfumes, mezclar olores de una manera magnífica y extraer el olor de cualquier ser vivo u objeto. Pero eso no es todo, incluso es capaz de crear perfumes que provocan emociones en los demás, como la compasión o el amor. La frase más popular del libro, justamente es la que mejor refleja las habilidades de Grenouille:

"Quien dominaba los olores, dominaba el corazón de los hombres" —Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

Es un personaje tan especial y poderoso que ni siquiera las enfermedades más peligrosas lo vencieron. Sí, es un personaje perverso, pero en esta historia no hay ningún personaje bueno. Todos son avaros, codiciosos, manipuladores, envidiosos y sin una pizca de compasión o amor; por lo que ser malo es algo de lo más de normal en esta historia. Grenouille odiaba a los humanos, pero creo que si cualquier persona tuviera sus habilidades también terminaría haciéndolo, ya que soportar olores desagradables por todas partes sería insoportable. Ya para terminar de hablar de este personaje quiero destacar ese aislamiento que tuvo por siete años. Hacer eso por mucho tiempo es demasiado peligroso, ya que puede trastornar seriamente la mente de cualquier humano; desde odiar profundamente, hasta incluso olvidar a expresarnos.

En cuanto a la temática de la historia me parece muy original. Es una perspectiva completamente diferente ver el mundo enfatizándonos en los olores, que me deja una pregunta para reflexionar: ¿Cuál es realmente el poder de los olores?

En cuanto a lo negativo mencionaré tres detalles: El primero, que aunque no hay un capítulo que sobre o falte en el libro, quizás pudo ser más largo en caso de contar más detalles de cada asesinato, o al menos de los más importantes. Lo segundo, es que me hubiera gustado que Grenouille tuviera un contrincante de verdad; alguien que le obstaculizará el camino e hiciera que no todo fuera tan fácil para él, alguien que no sucumbiera ante sus habilidades, alguien como Madame Gaillard quien no tenía sentido del olfato. Lo tercero, es con referencia al final. No haré spoilers, pero sí diré que me parece un final macabro, aunque extraño. Es lógico, tras ver el comportamiento de Grenouille, pero pareciera como si el autor al final no hubiera sabido como finalizar la historia.

El Perfume es un libro recomendado que disfrutarán de inicio a fin. Libro excelente.