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A review by library_ann
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
that was crazypants. I don't even know how to rate that.
here are my notes :
The description at the beginning of how the world smelled is just so right, and I just appreciate that so much
The rant that Baldini goes on mentally about how the world is moving so fast (travel to Lyons in 7 days!), and opportunities are opening up to just anyone (like that pretender Pellissier) is exactly the attitude I would expect of an older Parisian who doesn't like all the changes happening around him. (chapter 11)
Ok, part 1 was weird, in that it is a book that puts scent front and center (so to speak), ahead of visuals or sounds or actions. But Part 2 … I don't even know where it is going, since JB is living in a cave and daily explores his personal odorific memory palace. I don't know if I can keep up with this.
Chapter 30. Well, the memory palace thing is over now, but this storyline is just as coocoo.
"He would be the omnipotent god of scent..... For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath." (ch. 32)
Very much a book of procedures
And all of a sudden he's a serial killer (ch. 38) I guess I should have known that from the title.
What am I reading?! "It was as if the man had ten thousand invisible hands and had laid a hand on the genitals of the ten thousand people surrounding him and fondled them in just the way that each of them, whether man or woman, desired in his or her most secret fantasies. The result was that the scheduled execution of one of the most abominable criminals of the age degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ." (ch. 49)
here are my notes :
The description at the beginning of how the world smelled is just so right, and I just appreciate that so much
The rant that Baldini goes on mentally about how the world is moving so fast (travel to Lyons in 7 days!), and opportunities are opening up to just anyone (like that pretender Pellissier) is exactly the attitude I would expect of an older Parisian who doesn't like all the changes happening around him. (chapter 11)
Ok, part 1 was weird, in that it is a book that puts scent front and center (so to speak), ahead of visuals or sounds or actions. But Part 2 … I don't even know where it is going, since JB is living in a cave and daily explores his personal odorific memory palace. I don't know if I can keep up with this.
Chapter 30. Well, the memory palace thing is over now, but this storyline is just as coocoo.
"He would be the omnipotent god of scent..... For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath." (ch. 32)
Very much a book of procedures
And all of a sudden he's a serial killer (ch. 38) I guess I should have known that from the title.
What am I reading?! "It was as if the man had ten thousand invisible hands and had laid a hand on the genitals of the ten thousand people surrounding him and fondled them in just the way that each of them, whether man or woman, desired in his or her most secret fantasies. The result was that the scheduled execution of one of the most abominable criminals of the age degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ." (ch. 49)