The Summary: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was a bastard, born in 1738 to a syphilitic, consumptive woman working in a stinking fish stall as a gutter. The entire book could have had no mystery at all, and I would still read it and revel in the descriptions alone. This book is a perfume lover's dream come true. Another I can't smell without wincing, because it reminds me of heartbreak and tears, despite the fact that it came in a rose-colored bottle and smelled like green tea and lemons. There are certain scents I will never be able to wear again, because one I wore for months, while longing after a guy I thought I could never have. I learned that musk can smell rank, like sweaty, animalistic sex on top of a slice of Muenster cheese, or it can smell like the warmth of a mother's embrace. I learned that each perfume as a top note, which quickly dissipates, the middle notes, which remains, the base notes, which lingers onto your skin like the touch of a long-gone lover. I learned about making aromatic compounds in an organic chemistry lab, and that my beloved scent of jasmine (and tuberose) smelled as beautifully seductive and sexual as it did because it contained a compound called indoles, which smells like poop. I learned about how flowers were distilled for their scents, an enormous quantity of raw ingredients required for a few precious drops of essential oils. I learned about perfumes, and how they were made. My love of perfume grew when I was a teen.
Not all the smells were pleasant, of course, because hello, I did grow up on a farm, but my memories are built upon scent. I remember the bitter, smoky smell of the pits (so environmentally destructive, but whatever) that my neighbors dug in which they burned wood slowly for months to make a small supply of coal. I remember the green, earthy smell of the rice paddies where I grew up.
I remember sleeping with the window open, as the night air was filled with the scents of the flowering trees that grew outside my grandparents' house. White, waxen, and filled with the most beautiful, deep, richly floral scent that even as a 5-year old I could feel was seductive without ever knowing the meaning or the existence of the word. They were huge, each petal as wide as a fingernail. Those jasmines would put the pitiful little star jasmines to shame. I remember as a child, growing up in Vietnam, visiting my elderly neighbor's house and having him give me a cup of black tea infused with jasmine. I have never been a visual person, my memories are composed of layers of scent. The fact that this book had blood and murder was just a bonus.įor me, perfumes and scents are a visceral thing. I was predisposed to love this book no matter what.
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