Perfume and Pain
Anna Dorn
Simon and Schuster, 2024, 352 pages
$18.99

Reviewed by Kelsey McGarry

In Perfume and Pain, Anna Dorn both pays homage and gives new life to a classic queer genre, lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s. Author Astrid Dahl attempts to revive her career after she finds herself in a situation that leaves her slightly canceled. While trying to rejoin a writer’s group she co-founded, she temporarily loses sight of her goal and finds herself enmeshed in several steamy, flirty detours, creating significant distractions.

Perfume and Pain takes us through Astrid’s life mid- and post-cultural reckoning. One of the key challenges she navigates is balancing flirty encounters with two scintillating women: one grad student and one neighbor. The neighbor, Penelope, is a painter, whom Astrid finds slightly off-putting but also irresistible. Astrid and Ivy, the graduate student, begin to date, leaving Astrid to navigate many conflicting feelings.

Astrid is then presented with the surprising professional opportunity to adapt one of her novels for television. She considers the possibility that this might resurrect her career, but the pressure is at times too much to bear. Wrapped up in a series of conflicts, Astrid confronts clashes internally and with those around her.

By many accounts, Astrid is not a woman that an audience would rush to champion. Yet author Anna Dorn writes her as deeply human with brutal honesty, providing exciting and transparent views into the character’s world.

Los Angeles and the greater Southern California region are also main characters in the novel, providing a rich and bright background for compelling action, as well as characters’ behaviors that are less savory. The issues Dorn explores within the Los Angeles region include: love and attraction that borders obsession; the joy and fun of professional success that can sour with fame, power, and access; the raw heat of both the climate and relationships that can burn out as quickly as they began.

Perfume and Pain is rich—full of energy, wit, and humor. The characters are unapologetically feminine, desirous, hot, creative, imperfect, and blunt. Through the entirety of the novel, Perfume and Pain scarcely ever drags, and Dorn trusts the reader to grasp the complex characters she crafts. The novel negotiates the conflicts among these characters until the very last page, providing an ambiguous yet satisfying end.

Kelsey McGarry is a Sinister Wisdom intern and volunteer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is interested in queer history and archiving, scheming, and being outside.