Rating: 
Summary: Insinuates itself into your olfactory soul
Review: I just read Suskind's book for the second time. The first time was several years ago, and it has stayed with me during the intervening years. It's a book that remains tucked away in the imagination. The unique aspect of this novel is that it centers on the sense of smell, as the evil genius who occupies the main role has an extraordinary ability to discern scent. He can literally perform an autopsy on an odor, teasing apart each component which make up the whole. He kills simply to steal the essential scent of his victims. And why does this story stay so long in the readers memory and imagination? The sense of smell, so directly wired to our sense of emotional memory, serves as the link which brings the subconscious back to this book over the years. You'll read it again some day, as I did. This is a unique and fascinating novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Albeit technically good, inevitably boring and ridiculous
Review: Like for many reviewers here, Perfume began interestingly enough, with a great concept and interesting scenes of life in 18th century France. However, round about the middle of the book, I began to read the words but not take any of them in(i.e. BORING). Suskind uses virtually no dialogue. He is TELLING you everything making you less like a fly on the wall and more like a bored(read: VERY bored) student just wanting to take a nap.His main character while in the beginning is intrigueing becomes a nauseating little creep that I could care less about. The murders ARE mandane and to make up for his lack of any real energy, Suskind(like Cormac McCarthy) gives you detail upon detail hoping you're SHOCKED- but really all you're doing is yawning. The end is the best part! Because it's so laughably ridiculous(unintentionally of course). I won't ruin it for anyone, but the way in which the main character gets out of his due punishment must have been pulled out of some feebile dream the night before Suskind wrote it. No one who has read three decent books would buy it, thus making the whole experience of reading this book maddening. So to sum up, guy can write but end result is convoluted, pretentious and dull.
Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: This is one of my favorite books and I have read it too many times yet I still don't get tired of it. The people that put down this book I think are crazy -- it is so worth buying. It is one of the creepiest stories but so beautifully told. It reminds me quite a lot of Voltaire's fiction in it's ridiculous
situations, unpredictable turns and societal satire. get it! you won't be unsatisfied
Rating: 
Summary: Good writer, but ultimately a lifeless and ridiculous story
Review: When I started Perfume I was intrigued. It hooked me. The concept is a fairly ingenious one, and in the beginning Suskind sets the scene expertly. However, around about the middle of the book it gets boring, tedious, redundant, in which it seems Suskind is just trying to fill up pages with endless minutia of detail upon detail. His use of almost total narration had me reading words but not taking them in, i.e. just trying to get through the chapter(s). His lead character isn't very interesting just kind of a creep with a great sense of smell. I really didn't care about him, and the murders he commits had me feeling nothing really. Suskind's style (at least in this book) is very cold, as though if he were telling you the story his voice would be a droning monotone. The ending(without giving anything away) is almost laughable. I don't care how ingenious this man is with scents his method of getting out of his due punishment is completely implausible, making the story irrelevant inevitably. Ultimately a disapoitning, pretentious and boring tale, albeit an ingenious concept.
Rating: 
Summary: The story of a murderer.
Review: A remarcable book on a remarcable theme. Jean Baptiste Grenouille, a bastard boy from the fishmarket in 1800-Paris, discovers that he is a genius. He is to be the greatest perfumer of all time. Jean Baptiste is born with no body scent of his own, but he has a special ability to smell all scents, and to pick out one scent from another. He will use this ability to make the perfect parfume, the smell of love itself, and on his way to master this art he has no hesitations. The story is told through Jean Baptiste, and Patrick Süskind masters the art of the written word. We are placed inside Jean Baptiste's mind, and can almost smell as he does on his hunt for the perfect smells The book is a short read, and when you start it is not easy to put the book down untill it is read through , untill the remarcable end of the story. Britt Arnhild Lindland
Rating: 
Summary: bored stupid ,and irritated
Review: When a writer needs more than Queen Victoria's quantity of underlinings (italics) and exclamation marks per page in her diaries and letters I tend to lose interest. When the plot is so pathetically mediochre I generally put aside such a novel far before finishing it.
This time I struggled to the end because someone I respect recommended it. I find it shocking that so many reviews of this novel here on Amazon have been positive. There is far more to literature than merely one-off impressions. And so much more than fuddled grammar. Suskind took an easy way out and gave us a pathetically inadequate half-baked idea If we need to discuss fiction then we need to study the masters, and suskind is far beyond their art.
Rating:
Summary: Creeps into your brain and lays eggs...
Review: Oh my. While reading this quirky novel I enjoyed the plot, the description of fragrance-making, the exploration of The Tick's psyche... but... five years later I find I can't forget it. It just won't go away. Beware if you read this....it is quite unforgettable. (And has such an...um...UNUSUAL ending.)
Rating:
Summary: very interesting...
Review: I know of no other work that expounds on the oft overlooked human sense of smell. The human sense of smell, little more than an vestigal sense compared to our vision, remains a poorly explored subject, both in research and artistic creations. Smell for us reaches back to the more primitive perceptual world of our distant relatives, a world we no longer understand and a world which modern civilization has never been completely comfortable with. A world with which, if we hope to survive oursleves, we must come to terms with along with the rest of the evolutionary relic and throwbacks that comprise the human brain. If you're looking for a novel novel that will make you think long and hard about the human sense of smell, then you're probably looking for this one. Suskind's prose and wit are also none to shabby.
Rating:
Summary: Perfume
Review: The start of the book is extraordinary. Its descriptions of Paris and its people are so vivid and well researched that I sometimes read a chapter or two to my students of French. Unfortunately, the story slows down and I find myself skipping several chapters to get to the end. Too bad because it has such a great start.
Rating:
Summary: A Strange and Unsettling Tale
Review: Written in the style of a fable or a twisted fairy tale, Pefume is the chronicle of the life of Grenouille, who exhibits superhuman olfactory powers, and seeks to use these powers to his benefit, and, more accurately, to others' downfalls. Abandoned at birth in a pile of trash and dung, and treated much the same throughout the remainder of his early years, our anti-hero is a misanthrope of extraordinary level. He is first seen as disturbingly different by his wet nurse, who is troubled by his lack of smell. He lacks no natural human odor whatsoever, an indication of other human qualities which he likewise lacks, like soul and emotion. As we see him age in the short novel, we also witness the unfolding of Grenouille's lifelong quest --- to attain the most moving and powerful perfume, one which will have its effect on man, woman, and child alike. In essence, Perfume is a murder story, as the subtitle suggests, yet other things are going on here. Suskind is investigating the intricacies of what makes us human, where our emotional frailties lie, our dependence on emotion (rather than logic), and the effect of mob mentality. This little horror novel is most compelling in the effect of its fairy-tale-like omniscient narration, and the fact that despite its being set very deliberately in a particular time and place, it truly could be read as being universal, like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," which also has important lessons about being human, while masquerading as a grim horror tale.
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