Perfume by Patrick Süskind
Perfume by Patrick Süskind (or. Das Perfum - Die Geschichte eines Mörders, in French Le Perfum) I read it in German where it contained 320 pages. Boys and Girls, 16 plus. Originally published 1985.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a strange child. He's able to smell everything – but he himself doesn't have a scent. Which makes everyone fear him instinctively. It doesn't help that Grenouille is incapable of feeling anything… the only thing he can do is to steal someone's smell, to lock it inside of him and to combine smells in his mind. Which makes him a talented perfumer… And a dangerous murderer. Because the necessary scents for the best perfume known to mankind are the scents of beautiful women. And taking their scents means to kill them...
I hated this book. When school wouldn't have forced me, I'd never even have touched it. I am not a fan of these psycho-thriller kind of books. Either they're so disturbing and creepy that I simply can't make myself read them, or they're not well done. Either the characters can't make sense, or something else doesn't fit. In this case, it is a… well, it seems like a want-to-be psycho-thriller with historical elements. But the thing is, that all the interesting historical events in that time are ignored, because Grenouille spend the time getting high in a cave. So, why the historical elements if they are ignored?
To continue. An unfeeling protagonist is a daring experiment. It's actually quite fascinating how important the main characters are to the readers. Because no matter how tense a book is, if you don't like the protagonist, you aren't likely to finish it. An unfeeling protagonist means that you have a main character with whom you can't identify… I hope. But this, well, this drawback could have been balanced out. There are other PoV's in the book. If they had been more emotional, with people you'd care about or at least find interesting, the story would have been infinitely more tense. But like this, the other characters have as many emotions as Grenouille himself. There should have been a higher contrast between the psychopathic protagonist and the others. If you'd have PoV's from his victims in which the reader falls for them, the book would have been far more… well, creepy? Far more difficult for me to read? I don't know. It would have raised the book's quality.
Another thing that could have improved the book would be a different narrator. One who isn't as prejudiced against Grenouille – sure, he is right in this prejudices, but it would have been more realistic and more creepy if Grenoille's few human characteristics would be underlined. This would show how his fanatism and his lack of empathy drive him to unspeakable things, but that he's still a human, a person with depth.
Last but not least, my final point of criticism: He didn't create love. He created lust. Because to love someone doesn't raise the need to literally eat them.
The only thing which I actually liked about this book was the scent-thing. How much the scent actually tells us about a person, how much we're influenced by how a person smells. That's absolutely fascinating.
In brief:
To conclude I give this book a star for the ideas – the world of smell was pretty well done. Minus one for the style.