reading this for a second time a few years later, quite refreshing from my different perspective today. I really like the way Suskind captures the heaviness and deep emotive impact that underlies are banal and trivial daily lives and routines. Noel goes through boringly normal day and undergoes a series of realistically normal (and laughable) setbacks including being late for work, ripping your pants, and yet these are interpolated with bewildering emotions and memories of the past, explosive episodes of ecstasy, paranoia, social anxiety, dread, joy, sumptuousness. Detailed and perfectly descriptive narration, with potent insights and symbols both ostentatiously and yet also subtly laid out..
I love Patrick Suskind, his style reverberates in my very being, like reading my own internal dialogue, pure genius the way certain musicians capture the indescribable feelings of the inside world of the mind..