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| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | 
 enlarge | Author: Patrick Suskind
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.95
You Save: £7.04 (88%)
New (5) from £4.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 4405
Media: Paperback
Edition: Film tie-in edition
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0141029048
EAN: 9780141029047
ASIN: 0141029048
Publication Date: November 30, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Grubby and unique December 16, 2007
This certainly isn't a novel for everyone - it has some slow (but always beautifully written) bits. However, the writing is incredibly evocative, from utter filth to shining elegance. I read it many years ago and recently reread it and I *still* found it spellbinding. It's a unique novel that will linger in memory long after you put it down.
This is a novel of scents - beautiful and disgusting, innocent and rotten. While most novels focus on what is seen, heard, touched or even eaten, this one highlights the neglected sense of smell and the result is viscerally powerful. Give it a go and don't be surprised if you start noticing fragrances all around you, once you're done.
 Clearly popular, but not for me November 7, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Perfume" is one of those novels that really is 'novel' in that it has chosen a subject unexplored by other authors. I can't think of any other piece of fiction devoted to the sense of smell...which is both a strength and a weakness for this curious little book.
To Suskind's credit, the invisible world of scent is wonderfully rendered with words. The processes of the perfumier are intricate and absorbing. There is a wonderful sense of karma: everyone who 'helps' our chief character on his way (ostensibly for their own gain) meets an improbably fantastical demise. The ending was a pleasant surprise, too. I don't think I've ever read a crazy scene quite like it.
To Suskind's discredit, describing the smell of absolutely everything swiftly becomes tiring. It was difficult to join in with Grenouille's olfactory feasts - not because it was difficult to imagine, but because smell, when you really dwell upon it, isn't really all that interesting. I found the idea that the 'essence' of 25 virgins would create the most devastating perfume on earth fairly obtuse and sex-obsessed. Grenouille himself was difficult to fathom...he went from scheming megalomaniac to suicidal nonentity too quickly for my liking. And I particularly disliked the chapters where he secretes himself inside of a mountain for 7 years!
So, like I said - Perfume is 'different'; and that's probably why it's so popular. I, however, thought that it relied way too much on one extended gimmick...and failed to deliver a story with real depth.
could have quite easily have not finished it November 2, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I think my hatred for the book comes from the fact that I assumed it to be a murder mystery type affair and it really wasn't until the last third of the book. It was an easy read yet I found it so difficult to continue. Pages of description had me wanting to cut my nose off so I couldn't smell any longer and then the writer woudl insult me by summing up four pages of description in a bracketed closing statement- please choose one or the other! Plus is this guy invinsible - dislike the whole concept the book didn't seem to know where it was going and I found it painful to read. the only reason I finished was because I was reviewing it at a book club
Grisly modern fairy tale without the happy ending August 3, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I loved this book for the first third, wasn't sure in the middle and then loved it again at the end.
The real hook in at the beginning was the first couple of pages describing the stench of life in 18th century Paris. As the book progressed the language used to help you to smell the perfumes was beautiful and frequently made my nose switch just to imagine the wonderful(and not so wonderful perfumes).
The relationships between the main character and everyone he came across were really interesting, in that he did not care at all about the people just wanted to use them towards his final aim. Everyone he met just wanted to use him for their purpose and really didn't notice that they were being used too!!
When I got to the middle of the book, Grenouille was by then behaving very oddly and away from any other form of civilisation. As I found him a very unlikeable character, I struggled to believe in what he was doing.
The sections on the book about the creation of scents and essential oils were fascinating, always great to learn about new things through reading a novel.
I would recommend this book to most people but not a classic novel.
 Still unsure August 2, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I forced myself to read this (perhaps "forced" is a little harsh) after all the media hype surrounding it, and if i'm honest i'm still not sure as to whether the book lived up to it or not. While Suskind is triumphant in rendering the intricacies of the world of scent convincingly (my friend and i both agreed that most of the book had our nostrils twitching in an attempt to smell whatever Grenouille was at that point), the part that put me off was the supposed "revelation" concerning Grenouille's motivation towards the end. It wasn't so much that the conclusion didn't fit or wasn't logical, it was the idea that it was more or less a given that had been apparent throughout the novel in general, resulting in somewhat of an anti-climax. And yet, the scene in which it is revealed in though is far from an anti climax! You can see my dilemma.
My advice would be to read it for yourself...
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