Grenouille (French for "frog") is an unwanted Parisian orphan who is rejected by others because they are unwittingly disturbed by him. The reader later learn that this rejection stems from his lack of odour. He has an extraordinary power to discern odours and comes to loathe the scent of other people. He becomes apprenticed to a tanner at the age of eight and explores the city after work. One day he smells a divine scent and follows it. He finds that the source of this scent is a young virginal girl just passing puberty (14-15 years old), who is slicing plums. Unnoticed he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. When leaning in and becoming more intoxicated by the divinity of her scent she notices him and begins to scream, so he holds her mouth shut, accidentally suffocating her while continuing to be enamoured of her scent. Soon after death he learns that her scent dissipates and is lost. He vows to himself that to regain that scent is his life's purpose.
In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumier, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumier in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron. At this enlightenment Grenouille falls ill with smallpox, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse, the home of the greatest perfumiers, to continue his quest.
On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and reflects on his disgust with the scent of humanity. As he travels between cities and escapes the "sour cheese" stench of humanity, he dreams of escaping scent altogether. After having experienced the most divine scent imaginable (the plum slicing girl) he hopes to escape the influence of the world and find the deepest, darkest hole to crawl into and reflect on his memories of his most beloved scent experiences. He quickly turns off the beaten path and spends seven years in a cave on top of the Massif Central. It is more like a slanted well than a large cavern and he crawls deep into it until the light has stopped and he cannot go any further. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, spending all his waking hours imaging himself in a vast and grand library inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him "vials" of his favourite scents. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendour before sleeping. He leaves the cave only to eat enough insects and scraps to survive, addicted to lounging in the scent library of his mind.
One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by his own body odour. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes with a shock that he has no personal scent at all. He takes on an existential fear, for the first time, that without a scent he has no place in existence, in the universe, that he is not truly a part of reality and that without a scent he is nothing. Again he resolves to capture the scent of the plum slicing girl and, by creating the world's most divine scent, to show the universe that he exists.
Grenouille journeys to Montpellier where an amateur scientist, the Marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse, uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the "so-called fluidum letale". The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a famous perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including "cat shit," "cheese," and "vinegar", whereupon he is finally noticed by society. Previously not even an eyelash would bat if Grenouille had walked right in front of someone's face, but his new "disguise" can make heads turn and he feels accepted by society. It is only a test of his abilities and he has grander plans yet.
Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood, Laure. He believes her scent to be equal to, if not greater, than that of the plum slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak. Meanwhile he embarks on filling out the rest of the notes in his ultimate perfume. He has been told that there are 12 notes, 4 chords, in a perfume and that the ancient Egyptians believed in a 13th divine note, which Grenouille believes he can harness using the matured scent of Laure. To capture the scents of 12 other post-pubescent virgins Grenouille realizes that the only viable method involves murder. Since he is generally unnoticed, when out of his "disguise", he begins a soulless career of serial murder of the 12 young virgins around Grasse with the most beautiful scents.
Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent.
Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 12 virgins he murdered, overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy.
Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. But the experience of power, looking at the peoples' reaction, has dissatisfied Grenouille, because he is not loved for himself, but for the perfume which he created. He realises that he had always found gratification "in hatred, in hating and being hated", not love. As his existence has not been validated by his creation, but merely disguised once again, he decides to return to Paris upon finding that the satisfaction that he initially felt has transformed itself into hatred and disgust.
In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life people (thieves, murderers, whores, etc.), who do not notice his approach. He deliberately douses himself with the rest of the vial of his divine perfume while standing among the group. Overcome with the carnal passion and divine reverence, even more so than the people of Grasse, they literally tear him to pieces and devour the remains. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are "uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love."
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