Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
Hello, Stranger.
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character) + Atmosphere
Bechdel Test: Fail.
Technobabble: Barely.
Review: Evil is a challenge. How do you make a monster believable? If it's too ridiculous, there's no justification. If motivations are too believable, well, your monster is not really evil. Süskind nails it. This is evil as a fundamental lack of morality; an indifference to the needs and wants of others. And it's terrifying. Pacing is not always great, plot meanders a bit - but the mood, which is the essential characteristic of a horror story, stays oppressive, and unsettling. At less than 300 pages, this is worth reading for that alone.
The Medium of It
Spoiler Free!
She only wanted the pain to stop, she wanted to put this revolting birth behind her as quickly as possible. It was her fifth. She had effected all the others here at the fish booth, and all had been stillbirths or semi--stillbirths, for the bloody meat that had emerged had not differed greatly from the fish guts that lay there already, nor had lived much longer, and by evening the whole mess had been shovelled away and carted off to the graveyard or down to the river.
Gross! And what a great opening. To establish a world of filth, rot, corruption. Where disregard for life is a fact, and life itself is suffering. This is the tone of the whole book - reeking refuse soaking into every pore and every bit of being. Unsettling as hell. The bits of humor mixed in make things even more disturbing.
There is not a whole lot to say about this one, to be honest. Everything here exists to serve mood, but it's short enough that this is acceptable. Just enough plot exists to allow for a climax - also well executed.
The treatment of characters is one of the winning elements of this book. Even unimportant ones are given depth - though not necessarily nuance.
Since we are to leave Madame Gaillard behind us at this point in our story and shall not meet her again, we shall take a few sentences to describe the end of her days. Although dead in her heart since childhood, Madame unfortunately lived to be very, very old. In 1782, just short of her seventieth birthday, she gave up her business, purchased her annuity as planned, sat in her little house, and waited for death. But death did not come.
I cannot say why this style works. In most books this would be a jarring and problematic interruption - why should we care what happens to her, long past the end of her role in the story? Yet it just fits here. Choices like these are what makes this book so remarkable - there are all sorts of strange choices, yet by and large they land.
The only real issue with this one is length. Even as short as it is Perfume drags at points - primarily the middle third. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille travels to a number of different places in order to learn more about the art of perfume manufacture. These are basically waypoints; he travels for the sake of having something to do, to add an element of movement to the story.
Language Note Party Funtimes!
The writing is crisp, the humor is dark, and the mood is superb. This is a translation; John E. Woods deserves a medal for doing such a stellar job. This loses a bit in translation; the hard nature of German helps make this one more threatening, at least as a non-native but proficient speaker. Compare the same line in German and English:
Hier nun, am allerstinkendsten Ort des gesamten Königreichs, wurde am 17. Juli 1738 Jean-Baptiste Grenouille geboren.
Here, then, on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom, Jean--Baptiste Grenouilie was born on July 17, 1738.
Allerstinkendsten is an awesome word - a superlative adjective form of stinky, but knocked to another level. "Stinkiest" or "smelliest" doesn't really do it justice. "Putrid" is not a direct translation, but it captures the spirit far better than trying to go word for word. Woods hits a remarkable balance - his translations are direct, without him warping Süskind's writing, but some descriptors are modified to capture the emotion of the original German.
Give this one a spin! It's nice and disturbing, and unsettled is a good way to be these days.
If you're smellin' what I'm cookin' please consider using the link below! I'll get a few extra cents at no cost to you.
The Long of It
Spoilers Ahead!
I was a bit down on the plot earlier. Shall we renege on that?
My favorite bit in this whole book is when Jean-Baptiste Grenouille tries to escape from everyone.
As the sun rose, he was still standing on the same spot, his nose held up to the air. With a desperate effort he tried to get a whiff of the direction from which threatening humanity came, and of the opposite direction to which he could flee still further. He assumed that in whatever direction he turned he ought to detect some latent scrap of human odour. But there was nothing. Here there was only peace, olfactory peace, if it can be put that way. Spread all about, as if softly rustling, lay nothing but the drifting, homogeneous odour of dead stones, of grey lichen, and of withered grasses--nothing else.
This section is brilliantly written. All he wants is to be alone, no longer assaulted by the reek of people. That's it. It's a tragic episode - because once he reaches his goal, there is no further he can go. He is trapped - everything around him, in any direction, is a problem, a curse. He has to choose to reenter a world that is far worse.
Murder is an understated affair. Genouille does not view it as a big deal; why, then, should Süskind belabor it? It's a neat way to place the reader inside Genouille's head.
All in all a good one - disturbing done right.
Whoever smelt it dealt it, Stranger.
And don't forget to read a book!
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