"Perfume"

Hello! to all!

Today I'm going to talk about my favorite book "Perfume- The Story of a Murderer"

Perfume: tells the story of Grenouille who is born into the slums of 18th century France. Despite being separated from his mother at birth and being initially segregated from society for having no bodily odour, Grenouille survives out of sheer spite and sheer malice, transforming into a master perfumer and genius with a sense of smell so acute, that he can separate any scent into its tiniest components.

The narrator initially describes Grenouille as a obsessive man who, lives encapsulated in himself. This description proves incredibly accurate as he proceeds to work for several master perfumers to learn all the skills of distillation and scent extraction which he needs to enable him to follow his ambition of recreating human odour.

At this point Grenouille begins grow in awareness and as I was reading the beginning of his journey, felt empathy towards him and respected his strong desire to achieve his aspirations. As the journey continues however, Grenouille goes beyond merely recreating the human odour and sets out to capture and ripen the scent of humans who inspire love, which he believes will, take on a gravity that no one, man or woman, will be able to escape. To do this he must kill 25 young virgins.

The narrative is rich in sumptuous descriptions and spine-tingling imagery which really captures the imagination.

Perfume was recommended to me by a friend who described it as, one of the books you just have to experience before you die. Now, after reading it for myself, I have to agree.