First Impressions of Perfume

*SPOILER ALERT*

The first lines of Perfume made quite an impact on me initially because of they way were laid out and how different the type of writing is compared to most other books/novels. The introduction to the characters started very suddenly which led me to be interested right off the bat. Next, the type of description that the author used to describe the first few chapters also intrigued me when I started reading.

Patrick Sueskind describes the entirety of the novel mainly through the use of scent. Although he does include some imagery, it was mainly focused on making the audience smell the surroundings. This to me was a very interesting experience because I had never experienced something of this sort before.

One of the moments in the beginning of the book that captures what I’m saying is when Grenouille smells a redhead girl from across the city. Sueskind describes the way that Grenouille catches a small wiff of her scent at first and then goes on a small journey across the city to try and find her using only his sense of smell. What I found very capturing about this was that Sueskind was constantly describing the other smells that got in the way of Grenouille smelling the girl and how Grenouille had already smelled them so many times that he could easily just phase them out.

Overall my initial impressions of Perfume were very good because of the ‘uniqueness’ of the book. It had done something that I had never seen anywhere else. This book is definitely on my ‘must read’ recommendations list just because I can guarantee that people will not have read anything of the like before.