Perfume & Pain

How it reads

Perfume & Pain is contemporary fiction (literary coming-of-age, specifically), and its dominant mood is dark. It goes to difficult places and doesn't look away. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in a big city setting, in the present day, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, love and art and creativity. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is left open, for you to argue about. At 352 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's a hidden gem — known to relatively few readers.