My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I found my copy of The Perfume (Το Άρωμα in greek, I read it in its greek translation, the 1987 edition) in a used bookstore and got it for only €4. It was some of my best spent money of the holidays!
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is one of the fantasy characters sitting most cozily in what we’d call a moral grey zone. He’s barely human, really, his traits strange indeed, bringing to mind an extreme, sick but interesting result coming right out of an RPG’s character creation menu. His complete lack of charisma is balanced-off (or perhaps, induced) by his survival skills and, most notably, his LEGENDARY sense of smell. This isn’t your ordinary person that can connect memories with scents. Grenouille’s smelling capabilities are so exquisite, his other senses almost reach the point of atrophy.
Throw this character smack bang in the middle of 18th century France, with all its perfumes and the art and science of their creation, flowers, stink, human waste, the almost complete lack of bathing, aristocracy, Enlightenment and pseudo-enlightenment (not claiming I can tell the two apart) rural landscapes, and you’ve got yourself this great book.
I did lose myself in some of the scents described in The Perfume, marveling at the sheer power of the most underused and underestimated of the Five Senses, the one whose true strength seldom ever enters the realm of true human consciousness, instead pulling the metal strings from below, connecting with parts of our brain that have evolved little since the time our reptilian ancestors ruled the Earth. I can relate to a certain scent bringing back powerful memories, but for Grenouille, the scent was the purpose. He isolated it from any and all connotations: that was the only way he could see, excuse me, smell the world, everything else was secondary or irrelevant. It is really hard to describe how striking the smell of a tannery or of Paris’s cesspools (if they even existed) must have been, or, one the other end of the spectrum, what the girls’ perfume or the many different precise recipes as perceived by him might have been. But that’s the good thing about books, that’s where they win over other media. Merely imagining the scents, the odours, the stench, the perfumes, comparing it with one’s own (de facto and comparitively little) experience is enough to set the scene.
The historical background, even if not entirely accurate, is a very pleasant and convincing addition. I really had the chance to imagine a pretty clear picture of life in a small town in 1760s France, and even better, what an effect on this community a man with powers such as Grenouille would have. What I also felt was a prominent theme was of how little importance human life was at the time. Many, many characters just die, almost as an easy way for the writer to not have to mention them again.
That said, the book’s chief focus is (perhaps somewhat disappointingly) not the social effects of the protagonist’s power, even if that scope would have been awesome indeed. No, we, the readers, have a good look at Grenouille’s life and how it must have been for him instead. The look at the one-sidedness of his existence is quite uncanny at times. At the very end, we do not see the full extent of what an influence Grenouille could have on the entire world, which is something I would have liked to read about, how far his gift, malice and unique way of seeing the world could have taken him. But the ending is satisfyingly shocking and apt. No complaints!
I finished The Perfume in just two days. It’s a smell, I mean, small book so you can do much worse than giving it a whiff. It far, far from stinks! Yes, and now there are hints of cheese wafting around. Mmm, cheese…
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