Word: suskind
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...this fall, the fragrance that's causing the greatest sensation in Europe won't be sold in Bloomingdales but in book stores. German writer Patrick Suskind's international best seller Perfume has been translated into English and already has a trail of American readers avidly tracking its scent...
Grenouille sets out to create a human scent that is so uniquely seductive, enrapturing, and irresistible that it will enable him to rule the world. Included on Grenouille's unusual list of ingredients for this powerful concoction are young virgins, and readers who had trouble stomaching Suskind's disgustingly detailed descriptions of Paris streets will undoubtedly have some difficulty getting through "The Story of a Murderer" conclusion of Perfume...
Luckily for readers, Suskind is as skillful at describing scents as his protagonist is at detecting them, allowing us to share the unique experience of Grenouille's sensual explorations, if not his unbiased reception of both pleasant and putrid smells. Eighteenth-century France is a sensual playground for Grenouille, as Suskind writes...
...Grenouille's crusade for sensual domination of the world leads him to descend into the innermost depths of evil Suskind's work grows more and more bizarre, losing some of its attraction as an entertainment novel, yet gaining appeal as a strangely hypnotic excercise in the pains and pleasures of sensual extremes...
Perfume is no routine piece of parlor fiction. Rather, it is an unusually intriguing sensual exploration of human desire and the destructive conseqences of searching for power and love. If nothing else, Perfume is a testimony to the power of the written word. Suskind possesses a brutally honest, sadistically sensitive style that cannot but enthrall and challenge the imagination...