The year is 1738; the place, Paris. A baby is born under a fish-monger's
bloody table in a marketplace, and abandoned. Orphaned, passed over to
the monks as a charity case, already there is something in the aura of
the tiny infant that is unsettling. No one will look after him; he is
somehow too demanding, and, even more disturbing, something is missing:
as his wet nurse tries to explain, he doesn't smell the way a baby
should smell; indeed, he has no scent at all.
Slowly, as we watch Jean-Baptiste Grenouille cling stubbornly to life,
we begin to realize that a monster is growing before our eyes. With
mounting unease, yet hypnotized, we see him explore his powers and their
effect on the world around him. For this dark and sinister boy who has
no smell himself possesses an absolute sense of smell, and with it he
can read the world to discover the hidden truths that elude ordinary
men. He can smell the very composition of objects, and their history,
and where they have been, he has no need of the light, and darkness is
not dark to him, because nothing can mask the odors of the universe.
As he leaves childhood behind and comes to understand his terrible
uniqueness, his obsession becomes the quest to identify, and then to
isolate, the most perfect scent of all, the scent of life itself.
At first, he hones his powers, learning the ancient arts of
perfume-making until the exquisite fragrances he creates are the rage of
Paris, and indeed Europe. Then, secure in his mastery of these means to
an end, he withdraws into a strange and agonized solitude, waiting,
dreaming, until the morning when he wakes, ready to embark on his
monstrous quest: to find and extract from the most perfect living
creatures--the most beautiful young virgins in the land-- that ultimate
perfume which alone can make him, too, fully human. As his trail leads
him, at an ever-quickening pace, from his savage exile to the heart of
the country and then back to Paris, we are caught up in a rising storm
of terror and mortal sensual conquest until the frenzy of his final
triumph explodes in all its horrifying consequences.
Told with dazzling narrative brilliance and the haunting power of a
grown-up fairy tale, Perfume is one of the most remarkable novels of
the last fifty years.
