Patrick Süskind’s debut 1985 book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer became an international bestseller, acclaimed by both the ordinary reading public and critics alike, and won the 1987 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. In fact, it’s difficult to list the book under one genre because it covers a variety of bases, including fantasy, historical, crime and horror. Either way, it can definitely be described as “alternative” and not particularly mainstream in terms of subject matter or style.
So, what’s it about?
Throughout childhood, he leads a loveless, friendless and subservient existence. He is easily overlooked and discarded, yet quietly feared.
There’s something unusual about Grenouille. We learn that he has the most powerful sense of smell of any human, able to differentiate between scents from miles away with ease, including the ability to unravel each tiny dimension and element. Grenouille graduates from a lowly tanner’s assistant to a perfumer’s apprentice, utilising his skills to create the finest fragrances in Paris. He survives on the outskirts of society and uses the bare minimum of social interaction in order to get by. He merely exists. Yet through his perfumery and passion for scent, Grenouille truly lives.
Despite his success, Grenouille isn’t happy; he is looking for that one sublimely unique odour that will create the ultimate perfume. One day, he gets the scent of a young virgin and knows that it is a smell of perfection. He will commit the ultimate crime to capture it…
Firstly, Perfume’s language and style of writing is reflective of the period it’s set in, i.e. extravagant and lengthy, yet it is completely accessible and modern in the same breath. Very clever.
Grenouille himself is gloriously complex. He’s a grotesquely fascinating figure where I often oscillated between slivers of sympathy for him and complete and utter disgust. Through Grenouille we can see a quest for identity, the emotional meaning that scents carry and how an individual’s life is affected by obsessive behaviour. It’s an exceptionally intricate and well-drawn study. However, to create a story where the main character is so abhorrently hideous, with no moral fibre, is tricky. How is reader interest maintained?
Perfume is a study into depravity and the warped mind-set of a man who is repulsed by humanity yet seeks meaning and acknowledgement from fellow humans. He wants to rule over everybody and often has grandiose ideas of his own power and importance, which is offset against his intrinsic desire to be alone. He hates humans and would rather live in solitude, yet he is drawn to them. I can understand that perfectly. In fact, this is a rather apt way to describe my relationship with Grenouille: on the whole he disgusted me yet I greedily devoured his story. He’s a fantasist. He’s narcissistic. He’s evil. Yet somehow he is supremely intriguing. That is what Süskind succeeds in so well: in spite of the subject matter, this is a book that you cannot put down.
Perfume is definitely like a dark fairy tale which gets more and more whimsical the further into the story you get. The middle of the book is slightly bizarre and drawn-out. It feels meandering and unimportant yet it is still a strangely compelling read. It is during the final section, where Grenouille travels to Grasse to resume his perfumery, that the story becomes completely farcical. Unbelievably so, to the point where you can’t quite comprehend what you’re reading. By that stage I definitely had to suspend my disbelief somewhat. However, this was no bad thing. In the context of the book, it really does work.
The descriptive nature of Süskind’s writing is simply astounding. His detailed knowledge of the olfactory system (sense of smell to you and me) really immerses the reader into the story and using this as a base, he brings eighteenth century France to vivid, Technicolor life via his exploration of the pungencies.
Smell is probably the one sense which is devalued most often, with people not really placing a huge amount of importance on it over things such as touch and sight. However, this book definitely made me re-evaluate just how much reliance and judgment comes from our noses, and how we fail to harness the true power of odours. In Süskind’s hands, it felt like I was walking down French streets, inhaling all of the putrid and appalling smells of animals, humans, waste and death. The odours drew such vivid pictures in my mind which feels like quite an oxymoronic statement, but that’s the effect that this book has.
I immediately finished this book and I was stunned. I wanted to flick back and read over it again. Fantastical, surreal, intriguing and wholly original. The sheer audacity of Süskind’s debut novel is both wonderfully pleasing and repulsively horrifying. I’ve never read anything like it and I doubt that I’ll ever come across anything remotely comparable again.
A unique work of art. Outstanding and a true giant of modern literature.