Genre: Historical fantasy fiction, Magical Realism
Key Stage: KS5+ contains mature often unsettling content including murder, suicidal ideation and scenes of a graphic nature.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind (1985)
Reviewer: Faziah, Year 12
Perfume is a novel where the character Jean Baptiste Grenouille explores the world with his sense of smell. These scents are connected to emotions. He is an orphan who uses his sense of smell to which others deem him as a devil. He was born in France and uses these scents to explore the wider world an gain a greater understanding and will go any lengths to further expand this as it is his obsession.
Positives: It explores how the smells of perfumes can have a physiological effect they can have upon a person which was probably the most interesting part as it triggers many emotions that memories contain.
Negatives: Despite how interesting this book is some of the imagery explored can be somewhat disturbing as it captures how revolting some scents can be in true detail.