Book review: The Scent Trail

This "author" should be punished for releasing such insipid garbage into the world. Her book is insipid and ridiculous, as I imagine she herself must be. Anyone who doesn't believe that someone can have too much money should read this book. After all, anyone who needs to "travel the world" to learn about a few select perfume ingredients is clearly overprivileged. How she met some of the people in the book and got into some of the perfumeries she visited I will never know. She's not a perfumer. She's clearly not a writer. You would think that somewhere on the book there would appear a reason for anyone to take her seriously as an authority on fragrance, but there isn't.

Full of nonsense (e.g., her bespoke perfumer sends her to someone who "interprets her colors," or some twaddle), myth and terrible prose, this book will, sadly, delight many frivolous "perfumistas." Anyone who actually takes the ideas of fragrance or smell or perfumery seriously, however, should avoid this stale, rotten tripe.

In its way, however, this book could prove valuable--say, if you need to invent a ridiculous, queenly woman character, then you can't find one much better than Celia Lyttleton. In fact, I would go so far to say that this book is a masterpiece of trash, in the league of such drivel as Fabulous Fragrances.