Working in a French perfumer’s laboratory, he invents the most incredible perfumes to man, pouring them straight out of his mind. He then devises numerous crafty ways to move forward towards a proper perfumery career that gives him access to high-quality materials. Grenouille spends his childhood learning all the different smells in the world and their names. He can smell people and places and things to a degree that no human ever could, and this ability is at the center of his life’s obsession.

He can smell what’s behind cabinets and walls - not just obvious things like fragrance materials, but things like money, too. He can smell a specific person - or their absence - somewhere in a city while standing outside its gates. Ironically enough for someone who smells nothing, Grenouille is obsessed with scent, and his sense of smell is incredible. This guy goes without bathing for years and he simply doesn’t smell like anything. Not as a baby, not as a child, not as a teen nor as a man. He has abilities beyond what’s possible for a human.Īnd, most notably: Grenouille doesn’t have a smell. He displays psychopathic behavior and creeps everyone out. Everyone who meets him feels like they’ve seen something cursed, like they need to wash their hands. It’s very apparent from the very beginning something is supernaturally wrong with the boy. In fact, everything about Perfume: The Story of a Murderer makes me think Grenouille is supposed to be the actual Antichrist - or at least some demonic Antichrist prototype. Something about this feels like a twisted sort of Christ allegory in reverse.

Perfume suskind review