Summer Reading: 'Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,' 'The Anxiety of Everyday Objects'
Upon its publication last year in Germany Susskind's first novel Perfume immediately became an international best seller. Set in 18th-century France, Perfume relates the fascinating and horrifying tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a person as gifted as he was abominable. Born without a smell of his own but endowed with an extraordinary sense of smell, Grenouille becomes obsessed with procuring the perfect scent that will make him fully human. With brilliant narrative skill Susskind exposes the dark underside of the society through which Grenouille moves and explores the disquieting inner universe of this singularly possessed man.
(from Library Journal via amazon)
passage:
Here on amazon.
On the narrow Road to Fulfillment in Work and Love, not-quite-thirty secretary Winona is caught between the pull of her creative ambitions and duty to the daily grind
Winona Bartlett, secretary at a New York City law firm, has secret dreams of a more creative career -- to be more than a "non-filmmaking filmmaker." Nevertheless, she admits to finding a sense of security -- even delight-- from the basic rules and rituals of white-collar servitude. Then one day, into her coffee-making, dictation-taking world walks Sandy Spires, a beautiful, commanding -- and blind -- lawyer who joins the firm and inspires Winona to renew work on her long-languishing film. Meanwhile, Winona's love life is a mess: Her relationship with Jeremy the Sincere is doomed, her other dates are always disasters, and she stubbornly ignores the attentions of her engaging colleague, Rex. Just as Winona hits bottom romantically and also realizes Sandy is not who she's pretending to be, she comes to understand that she might need to take a more honest look at herself.
The Great American Secretary's novel meets the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, this charming, inspiring and wonderfully written portrait of the dynamics of office life speaks to every woman who has felt caught between duty and her heart's desire.
Hrm. A quick and fun read -- very much airport material (which, incidentally, is precisely where I read it). The writing is lovely, if sometimes a little too self-aware, which is also a fault of the narrator/heroine (see the second passage). As engaging as the main characters were (the cutthroat blind sexually-ambiguous lawyer, the charming and unfocused co-worker), I didn't like Fiona very much and that's problematic given that she's the protagonist (a inordinately docile one, although it makes a nice change from plucky heroines, I suppose). The problem is same problem I have while watching Scrubs: we're supposed to sympathize with but also scorn the repressed, privileged East Coast girl. I have a really hard time sympathizing with Elliot and it's not much different with Fiona. One of my very own filmmaker friends said that people (in the US, at least) tend not to be interested in entertainment portraying blue-collar or even middle class white-collar people; that the interest is very focused on the lives of the beautiful people (whether they're famous and fabulous or struggling to reach those goals). And yes, that is definately interesting and in an Aristolean sort of way, it gives the storyteller more to work with, in terms of the character's agency; however, these stories also tend to be told in the same geographic locations-- London, New York, Los Angeles. Which, again, is fine, as long as that's not the only thing presented. (And it's not.) It's slightly tiresome to be a nonwhite West Coast middle class girl and be able to pick up a book and go, yep, there's the snide remarks about those silly upper-class women who have nothing to do with their lives and in a couple pages we're going to get other thinly-veiled bitching about real estate and neighborhoods. Granted, those are both probably realities of New York, I wouldn't know; if I were reading a book about the Bay Area that poked fun at all the spoiled white kids who collect blotter reports about their drinking parties and the way that it's totally impossible to catch a transfer to Richmond from the Pittsburg Bay Point line at the Macarthur station, no matter how damn fast you run, because the two trains are never quite aligned so you always get up the stairs to see the Richmond-bound train pulling away, then yes, I would amused and gratified and feel like the author really knew the Bay Area and wasn't just name-dropping institutions in San Francisco. /rant
That said, it was an enjoyable book that tied up all its storylines more or less satisfactorily.
passages:
"Outside them, a world was always being built, always seeking order for itself. There were trains to get people where they wanted to go, some that headed far away, some that only went a short distance. Streetlights told certain travelers to halt, and others to go. There were multiple, well-marked places for buying everything necessary for warmth, hunger, thirst, adventure, lust, education, burial, birth. The kitchen trash went in a little white sack and then a green Dumpster and then a blue truck and then landed in a heap in some vast, untold wasteland. Food came from the same place, only on the other side of the hill, back to the city in another truck, in a crate, in a sack. People had figured out how to get electricity, and water came through a spigot, and there was this sense of deep, strong order to all that had been done. And with the order came an unfamiliarity with the language of chaos -- the chaos of weather, violence, survival, ingenuity, love, also inherent in all things, of course." (72 - 73)
Here on amazon.
(from Library Journal via amazon)
passage:
Here on amazon.
On the narrow Road to Fulfillment in Work and Love, not-quite-thirty secretary Winona is caught between the pull of her creative ambitions and duty to the daily grind
Winona Bartlett, secretary at a New York City law firm, has secret dreams of a more creative career -- to be more than a "non-filmmaking filmmaker." Nevertheless, she admits to finding a sense of security -- even delight-- from the basic rules and rituals of white-collar servitude. Then one day, into her coffee-making, dictation-taking world walks Sandy Spires, a beautiful, commanding -- and blind -- lawyer who joins the firm and inspires Winona to renew work on her long-languishing film. Meanwhile, Winona's love life is a mess: Her relationship with Jeremy the Sincere is doomed, her other dates are always disasters, and she stubbornly ignores the attentions of her engaging colleague, Rex. Just as Winona hits bottom romantically and also realizes Sandy is not who she's pretending to be, she comes to understand that she might need to take a more honest look at herself.
The Great American Secretary's novel meets the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, this charming, inspiring and wonderfully written portrait of the dynamics of office life speaks to every woman who has felt caught between duty and her heart's desire.
Hrm. A quick and fun read -- very much airport material (which, incidentally, is precisely where I read it). The writing is lovely, if sometimes a little too self-aware, which is also a fault of the narrator/heroine (see the second passage). As engaging as the main characters were (the cutthroat blind sexually-ambiguous lawyer, the charming and unfocused co-worker), I didn't like Fiona very much and that's problematic given that she's the protagonist (a inordinately docile one, although it makes a nice change from plucky heroines, I suppose). The problem is same problem I have while watching Scrubs: we're supposed to sympathize with but also scorn the repressed, privileged East Coast girl. I have a really hard time sympathizing with Elliot and it's not much different with Fiona. One of my very own filmmaker friends said that people (in the US, at least) tend not to be interested in entertainment portraying blue-collar or even middle class white-collar people; that the interest is very focused on the lives of the beautiful people (whether they're famous and fabulous or struggling to reach those goals). And yes, that is definately interesting and in an Aristolean sort of way, it gives the storyteller more to work with, in terms of the character's agency; however, these stories also tend to be told in the same geographic locations-- London, New York, Los Angeles. Which, again, is fine, as long as that's not the only thing presented. (And it's not.) It's slightly tiresome to be a nonwhite West Coast middle class girl and be able to pick up a book and go, yep, there's the snide remarks about those silly upper-class women who have nothing to do with their lives and in a couple pages we're going to get other thinly-veiled bitching about real estate and neighborhoods. Granted, those are both probably realities of New York, I wouldn't know; if I were reading a book about the Bay Area that poked fun at all the spoiled white kids who collect blotter reports about their drinking parties and the way that it's totally impossible to catch a transfer to Richmond from the Pittsburg Bay Point line at the Macarthur station, no matter how damn fast you run, because the two trains are never quite aligned so you always get up the stairs to see the Richmond-bound train pulling away, then yes, I would amused and gratified and feel like the author really knew the Bay Area and wasn't just name-dropping institutions in San Francisco. /rant
That said, it was an enjoyable book that tied up all its storylines more or less satisfactorily.
passages:
"Outside them, a world was always being built, always seeking order for itself. There were trains to get people where they wanted to go, some that headed far away, some that only went a short distance. Streetlights told certain travelers to halt, and others to go. There were multiple, well-marked places for buying everything necessary for warmth, hunger, thirst, adventure, lust, education, burial, birth. The kitchen trash went in a little white sack and then a green Dumpster and then a blue truck and then landed in a heap in some vast, untold wasteland. Food came from the same place, only on the other side of the hill, back to the city in another truck, in a crate, in a sack. People had figured out how to get electricity, and water came through a spigot, and there was this sense of deep, strong order to all that had been done. And with the order came an unfamiliarity with the language of chaos -- the chaos of weather, violence, survival, ingenuity, love, also inherent in all things, of course." (72 - 73)
Here on amazon.