The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

Published

Source: courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Clementine is a seventy-two year-old reformed con artist with a penchant for impeccably tailored suits. Her life of crime has led her from the uber-wealthy perfume junkies of belle epoque Manhattan, to the scented butterflies of Costa Rica, to the spice markets of Marrakech, and finally the bordellos of Paris, where she settles down in 1930 and opens a shop bottling her favorite extracts for the ladies of the cabarets.

Now it's 1941 and Clem's favorite haunt, Madame Boulette's, is crawling with Nazis, while Clem's people—the outsiders, the artists, and the hustlers who used to call it home—are disappearing. Clem's first instinct is to go to ground—it's a frigid Paris winter and she's too old to put up a fight. But when the cabaret's prize songbird, Zoe St. Angel, recruits Clem to steal the recipe book of a now-missing famous Parisian perfumer, she can't say no. Her mark is Oskar Voss, a Francophile Nazi bureaucrat, who wants the book and Clem's expertise to himself. Hoping to buy the time and trust she needs to pull off her scheme, Clem settles on a novel strategy: Telling Voss the truth about the life and loves she came to Paris to escape.

Complete with romance, espionage, champagne towers, and haute couture, this full-tilt sensory experience is a dazzling portrait of the underground resistance of twentieth-century Paris and a passionate love letter to the power of beauty and community in the face of insidious hate.

My Thoughts:

I've read all but one of Schaffert's books (and it's sitting on my bookshelf) so it will probably come as no surprise to anyone who's read my reviews of his books (The Swan Gondola, The Coffins of Little Hope, Devils In The Sugar Shop, The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters) that this is one of my favorite books of the year. Clearly I'm biased. But I'm not alone in my praise. 

• "Other authors have had clever takes on World War II spy novels, but none has created a voice like Clem’s..." - Los Angeles Times
• "The Perfume Thief is a pulse-pounding thriller and a sensuous experience you’ll want to savor." - Oprah Daily
• "Schaffert concocts a memorable work that oozes atmosphere and originality. . . It boasts beguiling characters who gain depth with each unveiled layer." - Book List

Kirkus Reviews is not so nice. They complain that the bad guys are not menacing enough and that the terrors are mostly offstage. To the first point, I disagree. There is a constant low hum of unease in this book because we understand what these men are capable of doing. To the second point, yes, terrors are mostly offstage; for that I was grateful. We've all read enough books about World War II and the Nazis to know that they did terrible, unspeakable things to people. We understand that trust is a hard thing to come by in an occupied city, where some people will do whatever they have to do to save themselves and others may well agree with the occupiers. There are an abundance of characters here Schaffert doesn't need to make that the focus of his book. 

Voss and Clem are playing a cat-and-mouse game and we're never quite sure who is the cat and who is the mouse. Schaffert could have crafted a book wherein his hero never made a misstep, where her plan worked perfectly and they were always one step ahead of the Nazis. But that's not this book. While Clem understands exactly what might happen to her and the people she cares about, she still believes that she is clever enough to outsmart Voss...until she isn't. I never once felt entirely comfortable. Kirkus Reviews is wrong - I spent this entire book worried that Voss was on to Clem, that Lutz would kill Zoe, that Day would push her luck just a bit too far. 

What Kirkus Review should have focused on was Schaffert's amazing (as always) characters. Clem is a character unlike any you've read before, with a story you've never heard before. Day, Blue, and even Voss have stories that could stand on their own. Or, instead of writing off the beauty of Schaffert's writing, they could have focused on his amazing descriptions and his beautiful writing.

"And the fields of war are full of ghosts who wish they could go back to that one split second that separates them from life and death. There've been so many lives undone by a misstep, a wrong turn, a hair trigger."

"Paris, our village, has fallen victim to a fairy-tale curse. The sun rises; the moon drops. The cogs of the clockworks tick-tock north-south, or east-west, in whatever direction they've always turned but time itself has turned to fog. The days: they don't seem short. They don't seem long. What day even is it?"

And, despite what Kirkus says, Schaffert does make us see what life in occupied Paris was like.

"The other night, we got our hands on a roasted chicken that was more likely some songbird, a back-alley jackdaw dropped by a slingshots. nWe cut into his plump breast and found it mostly empty, like he's died with his lung puffed up with a half-whistled melody. We ate the little bird like tender wolves, stripping it down to its skeleton, going so far as to break off bones to suck. Food is scarce in Paris, but the Nazis eat fine."

I recently said that a book was 100 pages too long, in no small part because it was overflowing with descriptions. But here Schaffert awakens every sense here and it never seemed to much. 

"My building has become a factory, a distillery, cellar to attic, a gasworks of copper pipes corkscrewing through the parlor's ceiling and up through the kitchen floor, winding around the bedposts, whistling like snakes with a lisp. The building's strange acoustics, and all the perfumery's pipes and vents, warp and bend our voices. Sometimes you can whisper in someone's ear from another room." 

"I suggest the ballet dancer (the scent o talc, sweat, leather, the sharp sour-sweet of roses turning to mold), and she says no. I suggest the journalist (typewriter ribbon, a struck match, the tart ash in the bowl of a hasish pipe) and she says no to that too."

"The tapestries and wallpapers, the sofas and chairs, are all in powder blues and rose pinks and sea greens, like dusty meringues in a pastry-shop window. Zoe grew up among antiques, probably tiptoeing across the Aubusson carpets women with portraits of unicorns in the fields of thistle. She sat in the walled-in rose garden behind the house hosting tea parties of her own, with dolls with human-hair pompadours and sait ball gowns, with felt mice in bow ties infesting her paper macarons and glass candy. Such a life."

 This is a book to delight the senses. It is also a book of truths and lies, love and hate, deceit, romance, secrets, forbidden love, and friendships. I loved it. It's the book I've been waiting months for.