by Patrick Suskind
Jean – Baptiste Grenouille was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages: eighteenth-century. His gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent.
The young Grenouille was like a tick. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. He required a minimum ration of food and clothing for his body; for his soul he required nothing. He saw nothing, he heard nothing, he felt nothing. He only smelled the aroma of the world. He had gathered hundres of thousands of specific smells and kept them. But he even knew how to arrange new combinations of them, to the point where he created odors that did not exist in the real world.
He knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. He would revolutionize the odoriferous world. He must become the greatest perfumer of all time.
A murder had been the start of this splendor (the girl from the rue des Marais – he had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent).
He created a lots of fragrances which he changed like clothes as the situation demanded and which permitted him to move undisturbed in the world and to keep his true nature.
He had experienced the life in the cave and the life among human beings, too. But he was suffocated by both worlds.
He created a perfume which can enslave the whole world. He could do that, if only he wanted to. He held the power in his hand.
His perfume allowed him to appear before the world as a god. But he knew: people believed that they desire him, and what they really desired remained a mystery to them.
He no longer wanted to live at all.
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“An ingenious story… about a most exotic monster…” (Los Angeles Times)
“An original and astonishing novel” (People)
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Strange. It’s not my favourite.
