Book Review: The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi
The third part of a trilogy, this novel features a 32-year-old designer of fragrances in Paris whose long-buried past in India collides with her present and threatens to jeopardise her future.
The Perfumist of Paris is the third part of a trilogy by Indian-American author Alka Joshi. The first part, Joshi’s debut novel, The Henna Artist, immediately became a New York Times best seller, and is currently being developed into a TV series. The second part, The Secret-Keeper of Jaipur, appeared in 2021.
The Henna Artist was set in 1950s Jaipur with the protagonist, a naïve 13-year-old Radha giving birth to the son of a royal heir, who promptly betrays her. Forced to give up her child, Radha is still grieving the loss in the third and final part of the series in which she is a 32-year-old living with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters, Shanti and Asha, in Paris. Having moved on from her earlier life, Radha has found her true calling – that of designing fragrances for a perfumer in the City of Love. However, it’s the 1970s when the women’s revolution is still underway. Pierre does not understand Radha’s need to work. He resents her neglecting her children and domestic responsibilities to follow her dreams.
When a project takes her to India, Radha has no choice but to confront the ghosts of her past once again. Along with her sister, Lakshmi, she travels to Agra to research various scents that she can use in her new fragrance. But when her estranged son, Niki, who is now 17, suddenly reappears in her life and wants to meet her in Paris, her world turns upside down. Her long buried past collides with her present – and threatens to jeopardise her future.
Joshi’s vivid writing evokes the senses with descriptions of memories and secrets “rich with scent”. To Radha, her children are pure scents – “with the intensity of juniper, the tartness of tangerine and the sweetness of figs.” As soon as she enters her birth country, she notices “the smell of coconut hair oil, sweet betelnut paan, diesel exhaust from the planes and the overpowering scent of sweat, anticipation and happiness at being united with loved ones.” Similarly, she depicts the mélange of odours in a Parisian street on a Sunday morning – “banana peels, urine, a patch of diesel oil, hot coffee, sleep”. Even though she feels that Paris has its own unique charm, it lacks “the crush of a rainbow of saris, the brightly coloured spices and the thousands upon thousands of smells that India produces naturally.”
The author’s “fragrance education” got her to meet several perfumers in New York, Paris, Grasse in Southern France (known as the perfume capital of the world), Lisbon, Istanbul and India. She also emphasizes time and again India’s strong and ancient connection with the world of fragrances. It is clear that Joshi is an authority on the subject as she shares fascinating trivia as the story moves along: Europeans once traded gold for cloves grown in south India in order to spread the spice across their floors to absorb foot odour; in ancient Greece, violets were used in love potions to induce fertility even though Ayurvedic practitioners used them to cure headaches and skin ailments; the Himalayan white-bellied musk deer lends its life to the creation of musk, the scent used in so many fragrances around the world. Joshi’s research also led her to find that Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh is considered the attar capital of India. Many European and American fragrance houses buy pure essential oils for their formulas from this unassuming Indian city. She also highlights petrichor – the scent of rain – which Indians have called mitti attar for centuries. Likewise, while sandalwood was introduced to Europe only two centuries ago, Indians have used it to calm the mind and soothe the skin for thousands of years. Some of Radha’s most lucid childhood recollections include cooling herself with dampened fans made out of khus (vetiver grass) during the sizzling heat of Jaipur’s summer. Incidentally, while Chanel No 5 became the first modern perfumer to use vetiver’s woody fragrance in 1921, Indians had been using it for centuries.
The story often shuttles back in time and references are made to the previous two parts of the trilogy. For instance, Radha sometimes contrasts the life her young daughters lead in Paris with the one she had growing up as “the Bad Luck Girl” in India – first, in a hut in a tiny village; later, sharing the cramped lodgings with Lakshmi in Jaipur; and then, at Auckland House boarding school in Shimla.
The narrative manages to seamlessly connect all the dots that come together in the finale. While it is not necessary for the reader to have read the first two parts in order to get to the third, all three parts flow well into each other – across different geographies, timelines and storylines. Overall, reading the book is quite a feast for the senses with parts of it often reminding this reviewer of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Mistress of Spices.
A freelance writer based in New Delhi, Neha Kirpal writes primarily on books, music, films, theatre and travel.
Recommended Topics