Perfume

One of the most brilliant, mesmerising books I have ever read.

The book tells the tale of an orphan and lost soul, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who's living down and out in 18th Century Paris. The reader is told two quasi-fantastical facts about Grenouille: that he has an exceptional sense of smell (...imagine a bloodhound in human form...) but that he himself has no odour of his own. The reader is further told that this strange trait renders him peculiarly disgusting to his fellow humans. They can't quite place why they loathe him, but they do.

Baptiste, however, fully understands the reason.

Thus begins his quest to develop a perfume that not only gives him an odour, but one that renders him irresistible to other people. Not a perfume in the sense of an eau de cologne - but a perfume that is exquisite and irresistible, while being of human origin. Where is he to acquire such a perfume? To reveal that would be too big a spoiler...

I read this novel while studying in Germany many years ago. I had to thumb and thumb a dictionary to bottom out the crazy rich vocabulary that is deployed through the book. It was worth the investment. The author paints scents with words in a way that I have never found elsewhere in literature. The disgusting, fetid smells of 18th century Parisian street life, the alluring scent of a young woman.

Reaching the end of the book was, however, only the beginning of my journey with it. Like many other readers, I sensed intuitively it couldn't just be about a man with an extraordinary sense of smell, fascinating as that is. It took me ages to figure out what the book is really about. Even now I'm not sure. For other much smarter people, this was doubtless obvious from their first reading, but the novel is (...I think...) a study in psychopathy. Baptiste is a psychopath (albeit a humble and self-effacing one), and his lack of odour seems to work as a metaphor for a psychopath's lack of a core personality. The disgust people feel with his lack of odour is the unease people feel in the presence of a person (psychopath) without the core traits of empathy and reciprocity that we expect in others. I think...

Outrageously original and evocative, this book must surely rank as a masterpiece of 20th century literature. I cannot recommend a book more highly than this one.