fragrant reading - Gazelle by Rikki Ducornet

I know that I read Gazelle by Rikki Ducornet about a year ago because I remember seriously contemplating a bah-humbuggy Valentine's Day post on martial infidelity featuring Gazelle and Blue Angel by Francine Prose, which I read around the same time. That post didn't come to anything and I never got around to posting about either of the novels. I really wasn't keen on Blue Angel and I've more or less succeeded in putting it completely out of my mind. Gazelle lingers, though.

Gazelle was an impulse buy (from Book Depot in St. Catherines, Ontario) before I put the kibosh on unfettered book acquisition. The opening sentence of its flap text--"A mother's betrayal, an unexpurgated copy of The Arabian Nights, a dazzling perfume-maker, and the scent of rose attar all serve to awaken a girl of thirteen to the erotic life"--is no doubt sufficient both as a synopsis and as an explanation for why I picked up the novel. What I remember most about Gazelle now is the novel's language and how fragrance permeates it.

That afternoon I heard the curious vocabulary of the perfumer for the first time. Vulgar was said with a sneer, venomous shadow with reverence.  A scent might be milky or metallic, sulphurous or chalky.  One was to be worn with linen the color of sand or snow; one was prodigious, one had a velvet body, another's was deep red, or, if worn in stormy weather, red veering to black; one smelled of old silver and cedar forests, and yet another was symphonic--"unlike the stenches my rivals call perfume but which are no better than the urine of asses and camels!" The great perfumes of ancient Egypt:  hekenou, medjet, sefet, and nekhenem he called: irresistible.  Their names alone seemed to darken the garden air with a mysterious smoke. (38-39)

Coming to My Senses by Alyssa Harad

Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride
by Alyssa Harad

Author Alyssa Harad is a perfumista and a contributor to Perfume-Smellin' Things, one of the perfume blogs I regularly read. In Coming to My Senses, Harad recounts her first year of perfume obsession, which just so happens to be the year leading up to her wedding.

I like perfume. I'm not fluent in the language, nor am I confident in my taste, but I'm interested in moving beyond blog-reading and effortless sampling. So I really am an ideal reader for this book.

Coming to My Senses begins with Harad's awakening to first the language of perfume lovers and then to the perfumes themselves. I enjoyed following Harad on her voyage of olfactory discovery. I loved the details, her openness, her descriptions. Harad begins to write about being a bride about a third of the way through the book. It's at that point that I worry that I'll lose interest in the narrative. As much as I like Harad by this point, I'm not sure that I want to know about her wedding-planning. I worry that it will take away from what I think is the real focus of the memoir. Luckily, Harad manages to remain true to the theme of discovery and perfume both reflecting and enhancing life despite discussing wedding preparation (and a friend's sex change). Strangely enough, though, one of my favorite parts of Coming to My Senses revolves around Harad's bridal shower.

When Harad writes about a particular perfume she doesn't always mention it by name. I understand why (she explains why in her author's note¹), but I can't help feeling a bit disappointed. Because I'm still learning about perfume and its myriad nuances, I'd find it so helpful to know exactly which perfume Harad was referencing at any given time. In any case, I enjoyed Harad's writing (especially the more contemplative passages) and her honesty. Coming to My Senses also inspired me to overcome my fear of snooty salespeople and visit a perfume boutique last time I went into New York City. I've also ordered a bunch of samples to try out at home.

One last not-directly-book-related comment -
Harad's author website, promoted in her author's note as where she'll give readers "the latest, updated scoop" (vii), is underwhelming. It has a blog with one post dated June 26, 2012 surrounded by an architecture with lots of intriguing, but empty rooms. Even the Upcoming Events page is out of date. The more I explored the site, the more disappointed I became. I wonder why the publisher's PR people would put together the site and not maintain it (the book only came out last month) and I wonder why Harad agreed to it. One nice, long blog post is worse than none.

1. I have provided the names of the perfumes featured when I felt it was crucial to the telling of the story. However, in some cases I preferred to leave the names out and keep the emphasis on the description of their scents and the emotions they evoked at the moment. Doing so allowed me to avoid recommending perfumes that may be discontinued or reformulated by the time this book is published" (vii).

disclosure: I received a review copy of Coming to My Senses from Viking via NetGalley.

Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy

The All Souls Trilogy follows the story of Diana Bishop, a historian and reluctant witch, as she solves the mystery of Ashmole 782,¹ falls in love with a mysterious vampire named Matthew Clairmont, and learns how powerful it can be to accept who you are. - author website

Shortly after reading A Discovery of Witches, the first book in Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy, I read this post on the Perfume Posse blog. The post mentioned scenting the series' main characters as part of the promotion of Shadow of the Night, the trilogy's second title, which will be released on July 10. I'm not familiar with either of the perfumes selected,² but I love the fact that the author and publisher were on board with the character-scenting project. Harkness is very detailed about how things and people smell/taste throughout A Discovery of Witches between the vampires and their heightened senses and the female protagonist learning about wine tasting so this character-scenting is an ideal fit for the series.

I have to admit that I was sure that I was done with the All Souls Trilogy after I finished A Discovery of Witches.³ I liked the premise of the novel⁴ and the world Harkness imagined, but was underwhelmed by the execution. I found A Discovery of Witches overlong at nearly 600 pages (it's not a standalone title after all). The narrative was often bogged down by too much detail: detail about insignificant things, which would have been less irritating if important aspects of the story like the mechanics of the supernatural elements were not left unclear or completely muddled. I wished Harkness had worked with a more ruthless editor.

I am happy that I decided to read Shadow of the Night after all because Shadow of the Night is a much better book than A Discovery of Witches. There's a time-travel element that makes Shadow of the Night feel a bit Outlander-ish. The way magic works and the relationships between the various metahuman⁵ groups become more clear. The novel does not stand alone because readers really do need quite a bit background information to understand it, but Shadow of the Night's plot is a nice novel-sized package. It is blessedly more focused and the occasional narrative jump to secondary characters not involved with the action of Shadow of the Night is surprisingly well done and adds to the story arch rather than distracting from it.

My biggest complaint about Shadow of the Night is that I would have preferred less in the way of important-historical-personages-as-significant-secondary-characters. A Discovery of Witches suffered from an excess of name-dropping,⁶ but Shadow of the Night takes it to a whole other level.

In short, I enjoyed Shadow of the Night, but I don't want to recommend it wholeheartedly since reading A Discovery of Witches is a prerequisite for understanding Shadow of the Night.

1. A alchemical manuscript referred to by its catalog number.
2. Etro Messe de Minuit for Matthew and Ginestet Botrytis for Diana.
3. As much as I like to claim otherwise, I'm still not all that good at giving up on books that I'm not enjoying.
4. Not the romance, mind you. I'm not terribly keen on the otherwise-perfectly-capable heroine falling for/needing to rely upon the overprotective-to-the-point-of-violence hero. I would have giving put up with the romance for the overarching storyline.
5. I'm not sure metahuman is the right word, but it's the one I'm going with right now. The groups I'm referring to are witches, vampires, and daemons.
6. Of course our 1500-year-old vampire had met practically every famous figure in recorded history.

disclosure: I received a review copy of Shadow of the Night from Penguin via NetGalley. I got A Discovery of Witches from the library.

scent and a review of The Book of Lost Fragrances

I reviewed Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent almost exactly two years ago (see review). Since then I've nearly finished a bottle of Hermés' Un Jardin sur le Nil, one of the perfumes whose development Burr chronicles in the book, and developed a fascination with perfume. Reading about perfume can be quit difficult because it requires fragrance vocabulary (chypre? that means: with citrus top notes and woodsy base notes) and an extensive flavor knowledge (vetiver? that's a grass native to India; no idea what it smells like) in order to describe something that is highly experiential. I follow a number of fragrance blogs and make note of perfumes that sound like something I might like, but I'll admit that it really still is all Greek to me. I'm beginning to figure out how scents I enjoy are commonly described, but I'd never be able to a purchase a perfume scent unsniffed.

A week or two ago my friend Nancy (another fragrance enthusiast) pointed me to author M.J. Rose's new book, The Book of Lost Fragrances, and the fact that individuals who preorder it can get a free sample of a perfume inspired by the novel (this promotion ends March 1, details here). I really love the fact that there is a fragrance tie-in to this book and I think it might actually get me to preorder the book if I had a budget for personal book acquisition and made a practice of buying hardcovers when they first came out. I'd already requested a review copy from Atria Books, a Simon and Schuster imprint, via NetGalley so I decided that I'd read it sooner rather than later.

The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose

After the death of their father, Robert and Jacinthe L'Etoile inherit the family's distinguished perfume house, which is on the brink of financial ruin. Tensions between the siblings are high. Jac wants to sell two of the house's signature fragrances to keep the business afloat, while Robbie believes that he can find another way to save the struggling firm.

Family lore holds that a L'Etoile ancestor traveled to Egypt where he found a book formulas from Cleopatra's fragrance factory, which included a soul-mate perfume. When Robbie disappears after discovering what seems to be an priceless antiquity in their father's studio, ever-sceptical Jac is forced to consider the fact that the ancient memory aid might be more than just a legend and that people are willing to kill for it.

The novel's prologue takes the form of a 2007 newspaper article about a new regulation issued by China's State Administration for Religious Affairs that bans the reincarnation of Tibet's living Buddhas without permission. The Book of Lost Fragrances' narrative follows a number of different characters including a few Chinese and Tibetan throughout, but the direct connection to House of L'Etoile is made when Robbie, a practicing Buddhist, announces his plan to give the artifact to the Dalai Llama.

The Book of Lost Fragrances is compelling reading, but I think that it could have been better. I don't mind the choppy narrative, that happens when perspective changes as often as it did, but there seemed to be a bit too much in the way of digression which is problematic in a thriller where tension is so important. Additionally some things about the plot felt forced or too convenient and some of the twists were obvious to me quite far off.

I did like extent to which scent was incorporated into the story and I loved that the siblings had a special scent language that they developed as children. I also appreciated the author's note, in which Rose separates fact from fiction.

There's a description of Sleepy Hollow that I'll highlight in a separate post.

The Book of Lost Fragrances will be released in mid March.

disclosure: I received a review copy of The Book of Lost Fragrances from Atria Books via NetGalley.

The Perfect Scent

The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr

As the book's subtitle suggests, The Perfect Scent is the story of "a year inside the perfume industry in Paris and New York". Author Chandler Burr is the scent critic for The New York Times (a scent critic! I'd never heard of such a thing, but of course it makes sense that there are people whose job it is to critique perfume).

In The Perfect Scent, Burr shows readers the perfume industry from the inside. In it, he chronicles the development of two very distinct perfumes--in two different environments--over the course of the year. The first, is Hermés' Un Jardin sur le Nil (I'm so intrigued by this one - I need to get myself to a high-end department store so I can smell it for myself), the second, Sarah Jessica Parker's Lovely (which is on the scented bookmark that accompanied my copy of the book).

Honestly I wasn't sure whether I'd like this book. These types of industry profiles can be fascinating or boring. While The Perfect Scent isn't a page turner, it is a very interesting read. Though the narrative is occasionally too personal and his technical explanations are sometimes too detailed, Burr is a very good writer. He knows his subject, he's opinionated (I love his descriptions of "bad" perfumes - actually I like his perfume descriptions in general), and he's passionate about educating consumers.

The Perfect Scent made me want to go smell out a perfume for myself. It confirmed some of my preconceptions about the industry, and dismantled others. Most importantly it intrigued me. It made me think about perfume, which is not something I normally do, and it helped me to understand what's behind a good scent.