BEST BOOKS ON... PERFUME
THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life . . .
THE first perfume I ever tried — not counting those teen years soaked in Charlie; we can all give ourselves an amnesty on that — was Miss Dior.
I liked it, we suited each other; anything else gave me a headache. So for decades that was my signature scent. Then, of course, they had to fiddle with the recipe and suddenly we don’t get on so well. Experimentation has been forced upon me. But who am I? I’m not really sure…
Calypso, in Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn, never has that problem. She has glamour and mystique and knows just who she is: she always wears Mitsouko and smells divine.
Fragrance is everywhere in this charming novel. It opens in 1939, when she and her siblings go to stay at her aunt’s house in Cornwall, to lie once again on her camomile lawn; it closes there 50 years later, after all the social, economic and physical upheavals that generation was put through. And Calypso is still wearing Mitsouko, because she is still very much herself.
A signature scent is only a good thing if you like the smell and its bearer. If not, it can make you quite sick.
Rebecca, in Daphne du Maurier’s classic, was fond of azaleas and the fragrance lingers all over Manderley. The poor second Mrs de Winter encounters it everywhere: in her predecessor’s bedroom, on the clothes still in her wardrobe and in the valley leading to the scene of her mysterious death. Our heroine can’t escape it, she is being haunted by a perfume: it nearly drives her insane.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Suskind, is a dark historical exploration of the power of scent.
Grenouille is an orphan in 18thcentury Paris, born with an almost mystical sense of smell. He becomes first a magical perfumier, then a serial murderer and is sentenced to death for his crimes.
But on the way to his execution, the crowd becomes convinced of his innocence and pleads for his freedom. He is saved by the scent he is wearing, that creates awe and adoration in everyone around him. Now wouldn’t we all buy a bottle of that?