Perfume

'In the land of skunks, he who has half a nose is King.'

Chris Farley

There are things out there that can rattle a brain. Perfume by Patrick Suskind is one of those things. The book tells the story of a very strange person: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who grows up under very strange circumstances and hence goes on to manufacture very strange times for himself.

Suskind opens the book with a very sensory description of 18th century Paris, a time when the city was yet to be associated with its perfumes and sweet smells and in abundance of a national stench that envelopes every thing, including, the King and the Queen. This olfactory description is so important because the protagonist of the book, like the book itself, is obsessed with smell. It is this obsession with smell that goes on to make him one of the most brilliant characters ever composed.

Grenouille is born under less than modest conditions: he is born a bastard. Abandoned on the streets of Paris and brought to a priest, we are forced to empathize with this tiny sample of human passions and eventually, human abandonment. The priest and some care-takers that Grenouille passes through are all slightly bewildered by the very presence of this boy. This is because this son of smelly streets has no odour omitting out of himself, a fact that his carers find baffling. But unknown to these mere mortals is the knowledge that Grenouille has the sharpest sense of smell that ever existed. While most children grow up learning the alphabets and numbers, Grenouille’s childhood is spent in identifying and classifying the world around him by smells and scents.

Added to this is Grenouille's absolute lack of conscience. He has no understanding of what is right or wrong, no belief in God despite the early years spent in the care of the church. He operates completely outside of the parameters of humanity; sights, sounds or morality play no part in his development and life, the pursuit of new odours is all.

In one of the most satisfying scenes of the novel, Grenouille comes across a famous perfumer after working various trades and changing many hands. The reader instantly knows that when the finest nose in the world walks in the finest perfume shop in Paris, sparks are about to fly. And sure enough, the master perfumer is astounded when Grenouille cooks up a world-class perfume by merely using his fine nose and without the painful measurements taken in the trade. The perfumer takes him in as an apprentice and together they make perfumes that the world has never had the privilege of relishing. While the perfumer is busy making money and outshining competition, Grenouille is busy learning the art of dissecting and isolating a myriad of scents. This part of the book is very interesting because never before has literature observed the trade of a perfumer. And Suskind’s own creation, Grenoille, is a delight to our senses because he is always extracting scents from everyday objects and making us wonder if we could do the same.

Grenouille’s ambition keeps on growing as his nose is unleashed in the wonderland of the perfumer’s laboratory, until; he decides to take leave looking for more smells.

The second half of the book is a little more on the slow side. Grenouille realizes that despite his high sense of smell, he came alone and is alone in the world. After an encounter with the fragrance of a beautiful girl, he becomes obsessed with the particular whiff and dreams in it. He wants to find more such beautiful fragrances. Many more such tangs. This is where the caption for the book: the story of a murderer, comes in. Grenouille’s addiction to the sweet smell of women is completely complementary to his own non-existing odour. He wants to take characteristics from the very existence of some women so that he can distil them into his own being and finally have a smell of his own. As horrifying as this sounds, it doesn’t make the plot explicit, and one has to read the book to come across one of the most exciting climaxes in literature.

Perfume is a fable of criminal genius. As one turns the pages on, one can smell the smells of fish-markets and gutters and caves and tanneries and a million other things. But at the same time, one is also aware that the protagonist can smell all this and yet cannot smell himself. This paradox is painful. This is because you sympathize with Grenouille through all his adventures and misadventures, right until you wonder whether he is going to take his nose too far and his hands too bloody. You wonder whether Grenouille’s amazing powers will save him from his self-destructive emotions. You wonder whether the finest nose in the world can conjure up the finest perfume in the world. You wonder and you wonder and you wonder.

Watch the Perfume movie trailer