Honest and beautifully written-a nuanced exploration of femininity and pleasure through the enchanting world of fragrance
Alyssa Harad's affair with scent begins in secret, late at night, by the glow of her computer screen when she stumbles on a blog devoted to perfume. Bookish and practical, and a stranger to beauty counters, she is surprised to find herself lured into a sensual underworld of quirky characters that changes her mind about much more than perfume. Candid, elegant, and full of lush description and humor, Coming to My Senses takes readers from a private museum of rare essences in Austin, Texas, to the glamorous fragrance showrooms of Manhattan, and finally to a homecoming in Boise, Idaho, to prepare for Harad's wedding. This deeply personal story reveals the intimate connections between scent, our senses, and the people we are and want to become.
"It's been a long while since I've read a book so luscious. This memoir about falling in love with perfume made me want to smell everything." -Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You
"A woman, I think we can all agree, should smell like herself. But which self?"
Late one night near the middle of her life when all her careful plans have gone awry, Alyssa Harad stumbles across a blog devoted to reviewing perfume. She is not the kind of woman who wears perfume. But she is a reader, and the ability to describe a fragrance unfolding in the air with words seems like a magic trick. In the reviews perfume becomes a place, a person, a moment in history. Perfume becomes a story at a moment when she needs a new one. Harad follows the magical trail of scentfrom a private museum of rare essences in Austin, Texas, to the glamorous fragrance showrooms of Manhattan, and finally to a homecoming in Boise, Idaho-undoing and expanding her understanding of gender, femininity, pleasure and identity along the way.Candid, elegant, insightful, full of lush description and gentle humor, Coming to My Senses reveals the intimate connections between our senses and our selves.
