Heady, Intoxicating and Enticing: Read Our Review of The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi

Paris, 1974. Radha is now thirty-two and living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up when she was only a child herself, but she loves being a mother to her daughters, and she’s finally found her passion — the treasure trove of scents.

When her friend’s grandfather offered her a job at his parfumerie, she quickly discovered she had a talent — she could find the perfect fragrance for any customer who walked in the door. Now, ten years later, she’s working for a master perfumer, helping to design completely new fragrances for clients and building her career one scent at a time. She only wishes Pierre could understand her need to work. She feels his frustration, but she can’t give up this thing that drives her.

Tasked with her first major project, Radha travels to India where she enlists the help of her sister, Lakshmi, and the courtesans of Agra — women who use the power of fragrance to seduce, tease, and entice. She’s on the cusp of a breakthrough when she finds out the son she never told her husband about is heading to Paris to find her — upending her carefully managed world and threatening to destroy a vulnerable marriage.

Alka Joshi enchanted readers with her debut, The Henna Artist, a vivid and compelling debut novel that explored one woman’s struggle for fulfilment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern. It went on to become a New York Times bestseller and was even chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Her follow-up, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, was equally well-loved, leaving readers eagerly awaiting book three in the series.

The Perfumist of Paris is a heady, intoxicating and enticing read, with Joshi ushering us into the world of the master perfumist. I adored learning about different fragrances (watch out David Jones fragrance counter, I now know what vetiver is) as we spend time with Radha, a woman who inhales all details of life through her senses.

Set in mid-70s Paris, Radha is navigating her way through a declining marriage, one once filled with romanticism but has been lost to the rules of family and domestication – not to mention a forthright French mother-in-law. Joshi writes beautifully about the rules of engagement of marital tension, long-kept secrets and familial longing. Radha is torn between family and career, past and present within the too-narrow constraints of the world she inhabits.

This novel paints a wonderful portrait of a woman whose inner life is fed by the exotic sights, sounds and smells of her childhood, and a gift of intuiting the scents (and hopes) of her customers and clients. But she’s also a woman who’s hungry for her own life and determined to seize the opportunities she’s given.

The Perfumist of Paris is a beautifully detailed finale to the Jaipur trilogy. In her final installment of this intricate familial saga, Joshi has again succeeded in filling our senses with her richly detailed world, one which is evocative in its desire for familial reconciliation and personal fulfillment.

Buy a copy of The Perfumist of Paris here.