“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.”

As someone who is preoccupied with the world of thoughts and abstractions, I always tend to overlook the sensory reality, whether that reality is the world of physical sensations, taste, or smell. However, these senses play a vital role in colouring our existence and influencing our choices. To be honest, I had never attributed much importance to the power of smell, and this book, although fiction, was a good eye-opener for me to be more cognizant of the immense influence our olfactory perceptions have on our lives.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille instilled terror in the hearts of people from the very moment of his birth. Born odorless, he is devoid of the very essence of being human, which, according to this book, is the scent that we give off. Ever since his infancy, people looked forward to getting rid of him, putting themselves as far away from him as humanly possible, sensing his soullessness.

“People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”

While growing up, Grenouille, although being odorless, discovers that he has an acute sense of smell, and can pick up any odor from immense distances with profound nuance, categorizing them in acute detail as a bookkeeper would categorize transactions of a company, down to the very last invoice. Grenouille builds his understanding of the world based on the categorization of these odors and he comes to have a mind palace of smells.



Thus begins his life journey of finding the perfect odor, and capturing it, robbing it away from its source, possessing it and making it his own. This paves his path towards becoming a serial killer, meticulously selecting young women with the "best" odors and murdering them and capturing their scents.

The writing in this book is one of its strong points, since there's a distinct dry humour that describes very harsh and tragic events in a casual matter-of-fact manner, something I enjoy.


“There were no mad flashings of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person.”



Grenouille represents the epitome of introversion, for he has a personality that shines its brightest when it is detached from the external world, be it people or events. His inner-world is his sanctum, and most of what he does is to collect enough pleasant olfactory stimuli which would allow him to enjoy those sensations over and over again, inside his mind, safely tucked away from the world.


“He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”

His complete disregard for human life and seeing it simply as a vessel for what truly matters, its scent, shows us Grenouille's almost-complete detachment from the realm of feeling. He is internally blank, a cold-blooded, soulless creature.

However, we can still trace elements of human sentiments inside him, which are buried deep down, by the two motives that drive his outrageous acts.

Firstly, knowing that he himself is odorless, and to him, odor being used as the main way to define the world, he feels fundamentally empty, with a lack of his own identity. Who is he, really, if he has no smell, the one thing that keeps him going in this world? Drowning in the "white fog" that engulfs his inner landscape when he digs deep into his thoughts, we see the fear that is always present inside him, the fear of his own emptiness, and thus, his compulsive coping mechanism of sealing away that hollowness by taking in the scents of other people, even murdering them to "enslave" their odors.


“He realized that all his life he had been a nobody to everyone. What he now felt was the fear of his own oblivion. It was as though he did not exist.”

Secondly, he is driven by the very base emotion that drives every human being on this planet, a need to feel loved, to feel significant. His odorless nature had made him an outcast from society, no one truly caring about getting to know him, or connecting with him. His own inner isolation had turned his feelings towards his fellow humans to hatred, and he wanted to find the perfect scent, to make people love him, and to gloat about that fact, to feel superior, knowing that these pesky people who he gives no damns for, love and desire him.


“There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself”



I enjoyed this book, though there were some parts that I found to be a bit underdeveloped for my liking. The characterization here, although pretty strong for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, was pretty one-dimensional for the rest of the characters. I couldn't really feel any distinguishing qualities between characters like Father Terrier, Giuseppe Baldini, Marquis de Taillade-Espinasse, etc... They all shared the same core qualities of being pretty arrogant and self-assured in that similar comedic sense, and I would say that they come close to being pretty indistinguishable from one another.

As for his victims, we do not get to know them at all. The ones we do briefly meet have no personality whatsoever, and seem to be more like butterflies in passing. The murders felt very easy and convenient, and there was no emotional element involved with that aspect of the story. Even if Grenouille's perspective was a detached one, the author could have put more emphasis on the souls of these victims, and the people impacted by their deaths. However, it all felt too detached and mechanical and I found myself not caring for them.

Despite all that, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was very nicely written, and even though we get no emotional impact from the murders, we still manage to feel disgusted and irritated by him, simply because of his way of thinking. This excellent character work and smoothly flowing prose made this a very interesting read for me, so I will gladly give it 4 stars.

Definitely recommended!