Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Written by Patrick Suskind

Narrated by Sean Barrett

A downloadable audiobook edition of the modern classic Perfume read by Sean Barrett. Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin UK Audio
• Release date: Apr 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780241971352

Reviews for Perfume

[jonfaith · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The early autumn of 2005 saw a young man arrive at our home. His name was Jakob and he was an Austrian exchange student spending the year with a friend of ours. I didn't know the last bit until I had drank ale with him and listened to Weather Report for several hours. He was a quiet lad. Very mature for his age, I admit. His parents were from Poland and he felt a bit estranged in Austria. He stumbled about our library admiring our books. He spoked passionately about Perfume. I read it a few days after his visit. I did not care for it. It was contrived, magical realism for a fleeting aesthetic reward. Oh well. There's more to the legacy of Jakob but it doesn't relate to this very minor novel.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel has a very clever and interesting premise--a baby is born who has no smell. As he grows, we learn that he does not smell himself, but he has a masterful nose (perfect smell, like perfect pitch?). He can pick out smells from behind walls, blowing on the wind--and not just strong smells. He can smell money, etc. He manages to apprentice himself to an aging master perfumer, and makes the man's business thrive again. But Grenouille, now a young man, does not care about that. He wants to learnt he art of the perfume business so he can capture the smell that captivates him--that of the beautiful girl coming into womanhood. In the meantime, he also learns how to manipulate people with scents he creates for himself--because with no scent, he is virtually invisible to people and dogs.I really enjoyed this, but found the ending to be disappointing and a bit odd. Or did he cause this end himself, using the scents he had made? Or are the thieves, cutthroats, etc, of Paris really that different from the regular folk of the countryside? SPOILER BELOW------That while the people of Grasse wanted to save him and help him when they smelled his scent, those in the Paris graveyard at night want to kill him because his scent makes them want?

[riofriotex · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This was a choice of my local book club; otherwise, I probably would not have chosen to read it. Nevertheless, it made a good book for discussion. The book was originally published in German in 1985. Set in France in the 1700s, it’s the story of a man born without any odor himself but with an incredible sense of smell.He becomes an apprentice and eventually a journeyman perfumer, and the best part of the book are the descriptions of techniques of fragrance extractionn of that era, such as distillation, maceration, and enfluerage.His quest to create the perfect scent (one that can influence human emotion) leads to murders and peculiar adventures (seven years spent alone in a cave, time as the subject of an odd scientist with strange theories). The ending of the book is very bizarre and rather gross.I can’t really recommend this one, except possibly as a choice for a book club looking for unusual titles to discuss.

[laurustina · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read "Perfume" in an afternoon and found it delicious. My sense of smell will never quite be the same.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Strange, brilliant bastard of Stoker, Shelley, Dickens, and Eco.

[amde-12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a fascinating book! I loved every single detail in the book, and it is so well constructed as the perfect lavish perfume Grenuille himself produced. Every single word, sentence and paragraph is so perfectly measured that gives you the best angle to look at the story. Nor boring, or too overwhelming, just the perfect dose of every single emotion.It is written in a very balanced way, giving insight of many characters and point of views in the story, making you believe that every single person is right, as his own personal motifs are the best for his/her own good. I really like the ending as well, cause I think it means that human beings are not that different from one another. In the end we are all the same species, with mild differences in appearance and behavior, but the way we were designed and created is the same for everyone.

[over.the.edge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Perfume🍒🍒🍒🍒
By Patrick Suskind
1986

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words appearances, emotions or will."

In 1738 Jean Baptiste Grenouille is born in Paris to impossible circumstances and a grim future. He eventually is sold as a laborer to the owner of a perfumery, Monsieur Grimal. Grenouille obsession with scents and smells starts him on an uncontrollable obsession with owning these scents. He becomes monstrous and cruel in his murderous calculations.
There are a lot of lengthy descriptions that slow the story down, but it is a really good story.

[honeysucklepie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Of course I need to read this as a grown-up and a Muslim, but I loved this book. Probably the murders would disturb me now. Otherwise I love the olfactory descriptions/appreciations...

[bravenewbks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book really engrossing -- the basic premise is of a man with an extraordinarily (almost magically) sensitive nose, such that he separates and identifies every scent he's ever smelled. The problem, of course, is that he must find a way to possess the very few scents that entrance him...

[librarycin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.25 starsJean-Baptiste Grenouille was an orphan and people didn’t like him from when he was a baby and wanted nothing to do with him. Mostly, he didn’t want anything to do with other people either. To other people, there was something very odd about him. Though others didn’t necessarily know it, Grenouille had an amazing sense of smell, unlike any other human. WTF was that ending!? Despite how slow-moving the book was, with a TON of description (slow-moving and lots of description is not usually my thing), I was ready to rate this 3 stars (ok) or possibly even 3.5 stars (good), but if I was the kind of person to throw a book across the room (I’ve never done it), this is the book I would have thrown due to the ending! WTF was that!? Other than the end, I surprised myself by not skimming and being completely bored by all the description of the scents and such. But, seriously!? What a ridiculous ending! Oh, the title is a bit misleading; well, there are murders, but they are almost all within a very short interval close to the end of the book. I’m giving it the extra .25 star for somehow managing to keep my interest despite all the description and nothing happening.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Destijds gelezen in volle hype. Niet helemaal overtuigd: interessante invalshoek, maar zeker 100 blz te lang.

[thelastdust · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The murderer in the story of Perfume an eighteenth century Parisian slum dweller called Jean Baptiste Grenouille, born with a supernaturally extraordinary sense of smell. He can sniff out more than just objects out of sight, people lurking in the dark or the threat of rain, he can smell souls - the very essence of being. He finds that none smells more lovely than the aroma of Laure, an exquisitely beautiful young virgin. His life's purpose becomes to preserve her powerful scent, but he cares nothing whatsoever for the body that contains it... Perfume is a gothic masterpiece and Jean Baptiste Grenouille is the perfect Byronic monster. He is both inferior and far superior to the humans that surround him. He has infinite power to deceive and control them. Yet he couldn't care less about it.

[theampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Perfume" is advertised as the story of a murderer, but this phrase sells the novel short: it's also about the unsanitary, odiforous filth that pervaded most aspects of life at the dawn of the modern period, the lonely, blasted emotional terrain of pure psychopathy, and the delicate, arduous process of perfume-making. The novel, which is remarkable for both its impeccable control and rich sensuousness, is also a thriller of a curiously muted sort. It moves slowly, and Suskind's pace never varies. His meticulous descriptions of life in the eighteenth century, of the process of perfume making, of the social ties that defined life during the last days of the French monarchy, would be interesting enough on their own, but, by yoking them to the story of his protagonist, a hypersensitive, hate-driven perfumer's apprentice by trade, Suskind suffuses all of this with a delicious sense of mounting dread. The book operates a bit like "Day of the Jackal," and that's high praise indeed.Since Suskind is a German writing less than half a century after the fall of the Third Reich, it's hard not to read the adventures of its main character as an allegory for fascism. Indeed, it's a comparison that the text, which centers around a character who craves adulation but is incapable of genuine human feeling, invites. What struck me most about "Perfume," though, is how it writes the body. While most readers speak of "picturing" the action of a book in their "mind's eye," this novel's literary universe is constructed specifically for the reader's olfactory imagination. It describes a rich and vivid universe that can only be explored through the sense of smell, and what's more, it argues that the human body is uniquely vulnerable to seduction through the nasal passages. Smells don't just waft in this book: they spread, infect, and invade. To take hold of a person's sense of smell is, in this book, to mesmerize them completely. While I don't think "Perfume" served as the starting point for a canon of nose-oriented novels, its focus on the sense of smell is more than a mere gimmick: it's a welcome variation on the physical experience of reading. "Perfume" is, in the final analysis, a powerful but pleasurable description of the horrors that attend unreason, and it's brave enough to argue that the human capacity for giving oneself over to unthinking pleasure -- or hatred -- is built into our sensory apparatus. It's a bold argument, and, in Suskind's hands, it makes for a beautiful and terrifying book.

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an odd book. The basic plot is the story of a child born in Paris, in extreme poverty, unwanted, with a peculiar attribute - he has no personal scent. However, he learns about the world by scent, more than any other sense. His incredibly detailed ability to analyze and remember scents leads him to the perfume business. So far, so good.But Suskind takes this story in some strange directions. I'm not sure if it should be less or more fantastical than it is. The further adventures of this character, and his eventual end, should affect the reader more than they affected me. If it was meant to be an allegory, I missed it, although there are hints of allegory or mythology throughout.Nicely written, but somehow incomplete.

[tropic_of_cancer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great book full of delicious descriptions. The movie was awful, though

[melydia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the life story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man with superhuman olfactory senses but no body odor of his own. The whole tale is abundantly strange, from Grenouille's unusual birth to the string of bodies he leaves in his wake, whether he knows it or not. He reminds me somewhat of Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. I would advise against reading while eating, as many of the scent descriptions are vivid and unpleasant. Grenouille experiences the world through his nose, and the world of 18th-century France was quite odoriferous. The weirdness of the story escalates at the end, until I started having trouble swallowing it. It was like the whole theme of the narrative shifted for the last few chapters. And if you look at it from that angle, the ending is (mostly) logical and satisfying, but most of the story leading up to it didn't quite fit. That said, I flew through this book and was fascinated by the idea of telling a story chiefly through scent. And it is indeed told well. I'm just not sure to whom I'd recommend it. Perhaps people who like dark and weird fiction.

[swissmama · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Read decades ago as a teen (in German.) It's still with me today!

[lindaspangler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

fascinating book about a man who smells as well as a bear, who has no scent himself. Also a murderer. reads like a very myth but set very much in an historical context in 1800 century France

[a_forester-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of those books that cracks you open like ice. Disturbing, intriguing, horrifying and educational all at once. A new kind of historical fiction that brings the world of smell into a sharp focus while showing you what life was like in another time. The voice was distinctly modern in that it was a tortured modernist hero in conflict about the love of others and love of self, both cynically existentialist and cripplingly nihilistic. Yet you find yourself continuing to turn the page to see what happens next. The ending is both surprising and beautifully circles to the beginning.

[lamotamant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The psychology of Perfume snagged me as I read. I think that's what really hooks one in to this rather short read; it plays on sense of self while carrying its readers off into the darkened chill of absence, lack, mania.

All in all, it was very interesting and disturbing. Which is probably what every other review of this book says.

I haven't watched the movie and I'm sure if I ever get around to it I'll end up comparing it back to the book as readers are wont to do. There certainly might be something interesting there, experiencing a book about a pariah who is driven to murder because of a sense he lacks in two different senses by reading the book (sight) and watching a movie (sight hearing).

Suskind definitely abounds in his ability to layer scent within his character and his writing.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You will never think about "smell" in the same way after you read this book. Mostly about obsession and how we can allow ourselves to be consumed.

[mazda502001 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I tried really hard to read this and got about halfway through and just couldn't carry on. I really enjoyed the beginning of the book and was quite getting into it and then it just wasn't holding my attention any more. I think that started when Grenouille left Paris and lived in the mountain - that's when the book lost me.Back Cover Blurb:Grenouille has 'the finest nose in Paris and no personal odour'. He uses this talent to become a master perfumier and a sadistic murderer, disgusted by the stench of the human race.

[bhryk0 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was read as a book club choice and I did not enjoy it at all

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to take a shower after reading this book--it is seriously, seriously creepy. About a serial killer stalking virgins for their essence to create the perfect perfume, the novel is filled with fantastic touches and the simply bizarre. All in all, I have to admire the way the author vividly creates a grotesque monster, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, as memorable and original as Dracula. An olfactory genius on the order of a Mozart, he has no smell of his own but can distinguish between the most subtle of scents. I'd also give the novel high marks for how it evokes France on the eve of revolution--the sights, sounds, and of course, especially the smells, and for how it conveys the perfumer's art. The descriptions of all the elements of smell and their power is unlike any other book I've read. The book is translated from the German, and the translator seems to have done well by it given how evocative and gripping I found the novel (and often darkly funny). If I'm not ranking it higher--well, blame the climax and denouement--which I found ridiculous.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an exceptionally original novel, opening with a graphic depiction of a malodorous France of yesteryear, and introducing the central character, a thoroughly nasty piece of work with an innate talent for perfumery.Even those who don't like the tale of dastardly murder may find the sections dealing with the mechanics of perfumery instructive. I suspect that this is the only work of literature which effectively provides a recipe for making perfume that smells like a doorknob.

[carpe_librum · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I managed to knock off Patrick Suskind's novel 'Perfume' in just a few sittings. I was hooked on the first page, and was looking forward to a riveting read, especially since I have a heightened sense of smell and this promised to be the focus of the book.Set in the late 1700s, the main character has a superhuman sense of smell. The novel follows his life from his horrific birth at a fish stall, where his mother squats to give birth, cuts the umbilical cord with her carving knife and throws him on the scrap heap.His life to this point is fascinating, however the plot tends to get more and more unrealistic until it becomes just plain preposterous towards the end. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn't recommend this book.

[luli81_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great story, the third part of the book is a delight. Fantastic description of senses and sensations, you can smell the Paris of the 1900's.

[trav_14 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this book after it was credited with "most memorable" character in a recent Books on the Nightstand podcast.The story is built around a poor child born in Europe when princes still rode around their fiefdoms on horses and chamber pots were common.What makes this child unique is that he has no scent. No odor. A fact which seems to be tied directly to his sense of humanity, his lack of ethics and his ability to dissect a scent into its various components.It's this last skill that he learns to apply for himself and get out of the gutters. He begins making perfumes. Perfumes that no one else can. Some of these parts of the book get a little old, as we revels in his ability to collect "the essence" of certain plants and animals to add to his perfumes.The story really picks up towards the end as he seeks the ultimate human scent. How does he make this... lets just say there are lots of murders and lots of "essence purifying" going on. Up until its very fast and very fairy tale ending.I give this story 3 out of 5 stars.

[ginntonique · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having not seen the film of this book, I picked it up on a whim (and the appealing design of the Bloomsbury classics cover). I'm very glad I did. The descriptive prose flows wonderfully from page to page, with the murders themselves being almost a side note to the beauty and grotesque of the aromas. A comparison could be drawn to American Psycho, especially in terms of entering the main characters head, but without so many shock tactics.If you read it as a standard crime novel, you'll be disappointed. However, the unusual manner in which the times are described, together with the variety of details that are touched upon provide an engaging read more akin to the classical fairy tales. The end of the book is not as tight as the beginning, but this does not particularily detract.Certainly twisted, but overlaid with beauty and and the twists and turns of perspective.

[theboylatham_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

7/10.

An extremely original story of a man and his life of smells and hunt for the perfect scent - one that would control mankind. Very interesting.