Bookclub Bookworm: Perfume by Patrick Suskind

This week's meet was my pick and I gotta say - I was truly curious of my friends' reactions. This book was an international best seller and not one I generally gravitate towards. The premise of the story lied with a young man who was born into the filthiest part of Paris is the early 1800s. The child was lacking in any scent whatsoever but had the power to sniff out the most subtle of fragrances in his surrounding. He was destined to live a hard life, given that upon birth his mother did not care of he lived or died and threw him in a pile of fish guts. However he also seemed impervious to death as the quality of life he was forced to endure was harsh. The story depicts the lowly services he was forced to work just for shelter and bare necessities and this progression of his life we are introduced to a multitude of self serving characters. It's all the pockets of characters that keep the book from becoming a how-to on Perfume Distillation. They were all interesting and so self motivating in their own right that you forget that the young man carries both the protagonist and antagonist role in this novel. Certainly not my favorite book that we've discussed but worthy of a read. If not for anything than for the unorthodox ending.