Perfume. The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

From the very first opening line of Perfume, the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind I knew I was in for an experience with this novel. "In eighteenth century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages." Such begins the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille,an orphan who is gifted with an astonishing power of scent and a dangerous ambition.

Books like this fascinate me as despite the fact that I loathed Jean-Baptiste for being a horrible, disgusting little man and this novel is nothing if not macabre I also thoroughly enjoyed it.It's richly descriptive and beautifully written and yet the whole time I would have loved nothing more than to see Jean-Baptiste be destroyed for his wickedness.

There's a great sense of otherworldliness and fantasy to this novel that although everything is set in a historical setting it reads like someone looking in from afar in a dreamy kind of way. Maybe it's the haze of scents that surround this book but it was not at all what I was expecting and that's exactly why I enjoyed how horribly enjoyable this story was.