Chandler Burr

The Emperor of Scent was the first big surprise of my reading year, and a good reminder not to judge books by their covers. It sat on my TBR shelf for years, always looking like something that was kind of lackluster but ultimately informative. Perfume? Who cares. And the science of smell? Boring, sure to have all this intense neurobiology stuff, eych. Why my dad thought to pass it on to me was a mystery but one does not say no to free books in this household. 😅

But then, last week, I was in the mood for something informative and serious to balance out rom-coms and fantasies and this was the only thing on hand that looked like it would fit the bill (or at least, the most interesting of the options). Turns out, my dad knows my taste and Chandler Burr can write.

This is, at the core, a character study of a scientist, Luca Turin. He’s brilliant, a bit of a mad scientist, an information sponge, an out-of-the-box thinker, focused but also all over the place, pithy, irascible, collects perfumes as a hobby. It’s also about chance and coincidence and creativity; about the scientific process and close-mindedness and ego; and about a theory of smell that relies on physics and counters the established knowledge.

And the writing? Burr matches Turin’s tone and manner with an equal vim and his prose is full of pell-mell sentences, pithy turns of phrase, and fascination. He’s aware he’s telling a story and he’s going to tell it right. (You know those long-form journalism pieces that take a deep dive into something really weird, or those Tumblr textposts about the zaniness of everyday life? That’s the vibe.)

There is chemistry and biology and physics, right down to formulas and illustrations and long molecular names. Burr makes sure to explain the basics and work up—what is a molecule? how does quantum mechanics work?—so that when the complicated stuff shows up, the reader can follow it, but he never goes further into detail than needed. It’s enough to say that a certain chemical exists or a certain machine does a thing. He does the same thing with the perfume industry and whatever other tangents the story goes on.

In short, I really enjoyed reading this. The story was a ride, the writing was great, I learned a bunch, and of the two books I was reading, this was the one I was most eager to get back to. I’m invested in Turin’s theory and there’s so much more to chemistry than I imagined. (Molecules are wild and the people who study them, possibly wilder.) The book is almost 20 years old though, so the science might be outdated now, I don’t know, but also, I don’t really care because I had so much fun reading this.… (altro)