Review: Perfume
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3 stars. I have this thing that I would probably describe as perfect music memory: if you play for me a song I've heard before, I can tell you when I heard it last, even if it was 20 years ago, and where I was when I heard it, down to the very last detail. Trust me, I'm of average intelligence, and it's basically just a useless party trick, but that part of my brain is, I guess, extra cool.
This book is about a man whose nose is, apparently, also extra cool. Perfume tells the story of Jean-Baptise Grenouille, a young man in eighteenth century France with a perfect sense of smell. He is able to identify, analyze, dissect and produce even the faintest aroma, and his skill lends itself to an obsession - a drive to capture and cultivate an ultimate perfume made from the scent of beautiful young virgins.
Grenouille is a psychopath - which adds a compelling layer to the character study. His entire existence is driven by scent. The premise itself is wonderfully challenging and the writing - as in, the way the author stitches together his words - is lyrical and lovely. But my eyes glazed over many, many times. I should've eaten this up, but it took me a bit long, primarily because, I think, there is literally no one to root for in this book. I'm all for an anti-hero, but this sort of feels, occasionally, like a writing exercise the author did to prove he could write abhorrent characters. And he succeeds, mostly:
Grenouille broke out in a different jubilation, a black jubilation, a wicked feeling of triumph that set him quivering and excited him like an attack of lechery, and he had trouble keeping from spurting it like venom and spleen over all these people and screaming exultantly in their faces: that he was not afraid of them; that he hardly hated them anymore; but that his contempt for them was profound and total, because they were so dumb they stank; because they could be deceived by him, let themselves be deceived; because they were nothing, and he was everything!
But it's detrimental to Perfume's overall success as an engaging novel. It can apparently be quite boring, venturing into the mind of one male selfish bastard after another. And it gets weird, too, and not in an interesting, fascinating way - in a kind of uncomfortable, this-author-is-jerking-off-to-himself, sort of way (I'm pointing in particular to the middle of the book, when things dragged and rambled a bit).
Ultimately, though, I sincerely enjoyed the exploration of scent, maybe only because I'm a huge nerd about sensory triggers and the way our senses impact and interact with our brain waves. Pheromones and all that:
For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who could not defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.
And then, that ending. Brilliant! I loved it. An astonishing and perfect conclusion. Enough to bring this up from 2 stars to 3 - I really, really liked it. Read this if you're in the mood for something luscious and unique. I think of it sort of as a Rembrandt - an intelligent, eye-catching, stimulating portrait painted with dark, moody colors. There are components of this (the premise, the writing, the ending) that are truly memorable and great.