Book review: Perfume, by Patrick Süskind

When this book came out at the end of the 80's, it immediately acquired great fame in Spain. Everybody was reading it (except me, because life happens). I would take the metro daily and there would be at least three people reading it, no matter what carriage I got on. This book took over for quite a while.

Friends who had read it sold it to me as a story in which a wicked man murders young women in order to steal their essence and use it to create the ultimate perfume. It sounded exciting. This description seemed to invoke a mystery murder plot in which we learn about the murder's progress and expect somebody to be working to capture him. Sort of a detective story. Well, I came across a copy recently at the library and took it up. Soon I realised that my idea of what this book was like was far from the actual story.

I was soon hooked up. After three pages, I was surprised (pleasantly) with the style. After six, I was in love with it. The author begins by establishing the background with lots of humour and a very harsh, realistic, and dispassionate view of the world.

But the main point is that this story is not about the crimes. It is not a thriller or even a murder novel. Written in a style close to the naturalistic novels of the 19th century, the book simply depicts the facts of the life of the protagonist. It does not elaborate on the crimes. They just happen at some point and the author almost skips them, mentioning them, then going on to describe other events related to the protagonist. He does not expand on this man's psyche but to delve in the one aspect of his person that interests him: his obsession with smell.

There are some parts that deal with other people, all individuals who at some time or another come in contact with him. It is impossible to feel sympathy for any of them, same as with the protagonist; they all seem to be cold-hearted, selfish people who care for nothing but their own interests. The victims don't even get this, appearing already dead in most cases, and little is said of them. The other characters share the common fate of a particularly disgraceful end after their relationship with the murderer is ended. The author seems to have made an effort to keep his manuscript devoid of emotion. Maybe trying to keep it objective, perhaps looking to produce emotions in the reader that do not get clouded by the course of events. Some passages are so descriptive of these people that they became boring to me. The self-justifying reflexions of the protagonist's second employer, for instance, are repetitive and tiresomely long. The period the protagonist spends alone in the mountain -seven years of feral residence consisting mostly of sleeping- don't really tell us anything about him, but we end up wanting for this scene to end soon. It's just too bleak.

To sum up, an innovative way of tackling a story using resources typical of another era which work very well here. There is no plot, just a faint storyline that develops slowly. There isn't depth in the characters. There is a fascination for the sheer unjustified, almost unaware wickedness of someone with strange powers who lives a pointless life.

Review by Natalia Prats