Perfume by Patrick Süskind
October brings foggy mornings, orange leaves, pumpkin lattes, and nights by the fireplace. Our column wants to recommend a spooky book for this month to read by the fire.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the main antagonist, is born with an absolute sense of smell, ironically he himself doesn’t smell like anything. As he grows up in Paris, he learns to identify the smells of any and every object he can. Eventually, he starts crafting perfumes. But he doesn’t want his fragrance to be anything ordinary; he wants the ‘ultimate perfume’. As a consequence, the antagonist chases his desires that stem from sensual depravity, leading to the tragic murder of a young woman.
Perfume’s pages reek of nasty odors, gore, jealousy, pride, corruption, greed, and murder. Written almost hypnotically, revulsion and a strange kind of sickness stick the pages together.
