This turned out a little different from what I had expected. I
thought the book would be all about the planning and executing
complicating murders, intertwined with detailed process of
perfume-making out of the victims. I expected a delicious thriller
of a death-chase against time in attempt to save the beautiful
Laure from the ghastly claws of death. But it turned out all upside
down.
*MINOR SPOILERS* Instead, the story was indeed that of the
murderer, alas his life and hardships. Starting from Grenouille's
accidental survival at birth and finishing with his maniacal desire
to make people around him notice and love him. The book consists of
four parts in total and all of them contain rather different
material. First part I finished in two days or so, I was so drawn
into the eighteenth century France. The characters of Madame
Gaillard, Grimal the tanner, and even episodical father Terrier
were developed very well, and presented with a wide arrange of
personalities. They had their own story to tell, and we even got to
see their ill-fated futures. Giuseppe Baldini's story was unique
and fresh. The unfortunate and untalented perfumer succumbed to his
own greed one day and perished in the waters of Seine.
Then it all changed. Part two was tremendously long and boring. It
was all about Grenouille living in a cave in a middle of nowhere,
feeding on every moving and dead thing and on his own fantasies of
greatness. It was as if the author got very disgusted with his
character and felt like he was supposed to make the reader feel
likewise. It seemed like Suskind repeated himself endlessly
describing the same thing over and over again, using the same words
and purposes. And then he finally scared Grenouille to half-death
with a nightmare to actually make him leave the cave and go back to
his original idea of making a great perfume.
Part three was very rushed to my taste, or maybe it felt that way
because of the overstretched previous counterpart. The story
finally got to the murders of twenty four virgin girls for the
purpose of collecting their scents and arranging them in a diadem
of some sorts, only to crown it with the most sublime scent of all,
that of Laure. However, the process of making the perfume was not
revealed at all, the ways Grenouille handled the victims and
disposed of evidence was not known, and all in all we knew nothing
of Laure as a character accept that she was very beautiful. She
looked more like a porcelain doll, dragged from one place to
another aimlessly and unquestioning, so to be saved from the serial
killer. But the reader should know better, that all undeveloped
characters must die eventually one way or another.