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"A hint of Moulin Rouge, a whiff of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, a little spritz of Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief... The Perfume Thief is a pulse-pounding thriller and a sensuous experience you’ll want to savor."—Oprah Daily
"[A] superb novel ... This is historical fiction at its finest, vivid and beautifully rendered." —Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Sea of Tranquility
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.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 3, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593408162
- File size: 420532 KB
- Duration: 14:36:06
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from June 28, 2021
Schaffert’s intoxicating blend of decadence and intrigue (after The Swan Gondola) brings Nazi-occupied Paris vividly to life. Narrator Clementine, a gender-fluid American expatriate in her 70s, is a perfumer and former thief who embraces the transgressive habitués of the city’s bordellos and cabarets. When a singer friend asks Clementine to steal the hidden diary of her father, the world-renowned perfumer Pascal, from the house the Nazis ejected them from, Clementine hopes to kill two birds with one stone: keep Pascal’s perfume formula out of his enemies’ hands, and take possession herself of his trade secrets, some of which she believes he stole from her. To achieve her goal, Clementine turns latter-day Scheherazade, stringing along Pascal’s Nazi usurper, bureaucrat Oskar Voss, while unfurling a running account of her colorful and queer personal history as she searches the perfumer’s premises. Schaffert’s evocation of Paris and its wartime demimonde is sensual and alluring, but the heart of his novel is Clementine’s demonstration through her own adventures of how every life is its own heady perfume, distilled from the personal experiences of the individual. This is a rich and rewarding tale, as original and unique as the handiwork of its eponymous character. Agent: Alice Tasman, Jean V. Naggar Literary. -
The voice of this audiobook--part thriller, part literary novel--is delivered with particular flair and conviction by narrator Gabrielle de Cuir. Charlie, n�e Clementine, is an expatriate American and retired master thief who is running a perfume shop in Paris when the Nazis arrive. Protector of a small group of misfits and potential deportees, Charlie matches wits with the Nazi officer who is commissioned with appropriating France's cultural treasures--including its legendary perfumes. This is a novel of atmosphere, and Charlie's tart, worldly observations roll off de Cuir's tongue with nonchalance--while her German adversary parries with a sleepy, serpentine menace. Not much real action happens, but the setting, the historical detail, and, in particular, the angle on perfume making, make this fascinating listening. Stefan Rudnicki reads an author's note at the end. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
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