A review by sofipitch
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Suskind

dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I liked how sensual the book was, and I'm a fan of the magical realism genre so I do like that story telling style. But there was also a lot I didn't like about the book. I almost put it down after first picking it up because I felt like the way Grenouille was written was ableist. He isn't explicitly disabled but some of the things intended to make him scary just feel like describing an autistic person. But I gave this book the benefit of the doubt but then encountered casual racism, in the use of the word "n-word-ly" used in the narrative, there's another racist section about the Romanian and jewish ppl, which might have been on purpose by the author to show how stupid the thinking in 1700s France was, but it's hard to tell and at this point the author is getting a LOT of benefit of the doubt. There's also the fact that no female character even talks, they mostly just serve to get murdered and aren't described unless to fetishize their beauty, which just rubbed me the wrong way. The pace of the book also made no sense, the climax and falling action just felt really anti-climactic and poorly thought out. A lot of the action and what's described in this book seems just for shock value rather than having any literary merit. I like the writing style and the setting but I think if that were taken away it's just meh.
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