In the StoryThe Perfume That Didn’t Exist
Alma wanted to recover a scent. Thousands of strangers recognize their home in it. In Grasse, Alma Valette composes the fragrance of a home she holds in an impossible memory. A material, an accord, a sensation she believed was hers alone. When she gets close, other people say they recognize what they lost in another life.
Open the novel ↗A moment in the opening pages
Alma Valette put her bag beneath the bench and waited for the door to cut off the corridor. It always took a few seconds. Other people entered a room; first she had to let the one she was leaving disappear. Reception coffee, the detergent on the technician she passed on the stairs, scooter exhaust on the boulevard. When those traces withdrew, the laboratory regained its geography.Read the excerpt ↗