The style of the novel can be characterized by the way it blends fantasy and fiction with factual information.[4] That combination creates two distinguishable narrative lines[5] - the fantastic one, which is conveyed in Grenouille's supernatural sense of smell, his odorlessness, and fairy-tale tones in the story, as well as the realistic one, composed of the socio-historical circumstances of the plot and naturalistic descriptions of the environment, the perfume production and murders.[6] The novel’s realism is also visible in thorough descriptions of historical perfumery practices.[7] According to Rindisbacher, the work "gathered together and phrased in popular terms the state of the art of olfactory and perfumistic knowledge and spun it into the realm of fantasy and imagination".[7]
The diction of the novel evokes vivid sensory images.[8] It links typically visual cognitive activities with the sense of smell, which is represented by the way Grenouille perceives the world.[9] He understands more through olfaction, rather than vision, and that is reflected in the language of the novel, as the verbs in the literature normally associated with visual perception relate, in Grenouille’s case, to the process of smelling.[10]
Another conspicuous stylistic feature of the work is an extensive use of intertextuality, which has been met with both positive and negative critical response.[11] Literary allusions identified by the critics include references to works by Flaubert, Balzac, Baudelaire, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Thomas Mann,[12] and Goethe. In the literature, for instance, there were observed some resemblances to the story of Faust.[13] While Perfume received much praise for being original and imaginative,[14] its citational structure has been either received enthusiastically for speaking to the literary acumen of the reader,[15] or recognized as problematic, due to the overload of constant allusion and pastiche,[16] or being considered a “parody” of other works.[15]
