Years ago I remember one of "those" pub conversations where I lamented the lot of those without a sense a smell and that people would empathise with their plight if there was a decent word for it. With an early mobile phone, some bright spark WAPped the word Anosmic - and my point was made - that sounded clinical rather than a part of life. By the end of the evening, we had come up with a word (Quoom), and felt duty-bound to share it with the world.

This clearly was not a success and when, all of a sudden, the world turned quoom they didn't have the word for it. This is a point made by Totaro and Wainwright, though they don't use the word quoom because they were not aware of this pub conversation - possibly the only missed bit of research here. Because On The Scent is one of those brilliant investigative science books which takes a prescient issue (why did so many people lose their sense of smell during COVID), via a human story - the little appreciated misery of the anosmic, and use it as a jumping-off point to talk all things smelly. This is not the book for you if you balk at the use of the word poo - because it comes up a lot, often joyously as people rediscover their sense of smell via the more pungent of smells.

What puts On The Scent above many similar popular science takes is a mixture of a journalistic story to be dug up around COVID, and a much more general empathy about a sense many people take for granted and certainly don't understand. This turns out to be a cutting-edge topic by virtue of having been so ignored. The authors are also particularly generous to predecessors on this trail, they have a story about COVID as well as a general tale about the senses, but others have trod this road before when it hadn't affected so many people. I lost my smell and taste for a few days with COVID and had a similar feeling of bereftness, and very quickly picked up rituals of tasting and smelling to see if it was coming back. There are tales here of retraining the nose, of how to live without smell, and even those whose nasal palate has shifted so they smell something disgusting when it should be attractive. But as a narrative cornucopia, a story about disease and symptoms, and support for the quoom amongst us, this is bang on the nose.

Really interesting book about scent the author lost her sense of smell due to Covid.She writes about her search for how perfumes their notes are created.fascinating read

I need this book on my own shelves. It's full of information about smell and how it was viewed in time. Sometimes we can take the smell for granted but only when we lose it we realize how important it, actually, is.

Decent book about our sense of smell and various scents. I learned a lot, but did skim a lot of sections. The author just had a dry writing style. I still recommend it as a good information source on the topic, though.

"This just may the most-unlikely book fragrance lovers will adore." -ScentLodge newsletter, February 2023

As someone who has lost their sense of smell due to covid, this book was fascinating. It is written by a journalist who lost her sense of smell due to covid and decided to find out more. It is a popular science book, easy to read and understand, but not dumbed down. It is not just about scent loss due to covid, this only makes up a small part of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who has lost their sense of smell, or who has any impairment to their sense of smell, but also to anyone who loves popular science books. It is very interesting and very readable.

A riveting olfactory adventure into the sense of smell. Totaro and Wainwright trace the history of scent from the last few centuries to the present day, anchoring the narrative to the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest and established scientific research, and interviews and reflections on the experience of odour and olfaction.

"As a sense of smell was being dismissed, vision was being championed."

Totaro and Wainwright are an engaging pair of writers. The anecdotes that they weave into this nonfiction narrative are pertinent and captivating. At the same time, I found myself growing weary of the never-ending references to COVID-19. There was simply too much of it, and it will certainly date the work. I understand that Totaro was inspired by her personal experience of anosmia (loss of scent) brought on by her COVID-19 infection and the rather puzzling response of the scientific and medical communities to this symptom and side-effect. We certainly focus too much on vision, hearing, and tactility over our other senses, perhaps especially smell. But COVID-19 is but one case study, even if it was the impetus for this work.

"Unlike light and sound waves, which are relatively stable stimuli and can be measured and document, odorants behave very differently depending on how they interact with other smells already in the surrounding air."

I did enjoy the range of materials and especially the critical take on histories and personages. I was alarmed to find out that Broca's musings have continued to be relied upon by modern scientists and researchers as a source of empirical evidence about the world. I rolled my eyes at the mention of Freud, whose work I simply wish would just dust away into the sands of time. You might not be surprised to hear that he thought smell was an "immature" sense you'd lose as you matured—and if you didn't, you must have some "form of arrested psychological development," as Totaro and Wainwright humorously put it. I appreciated that the authors brought in and named women and non-Western players, and actually interviewed them rather than simply outlining and citing their work.

"... in Jahai, cnes (pronounced something like 'chnges') encapsulates the smell of smoke and petrol, the stench of bat droppings and bat caves, some types of millipedes, the root of wild ginger and the wood of wild mango among other odour sources."

Still, this leads me to another annoyance: the rather uneven use of references. Literatures and studies are referred to in bulk, as if we're supposed to know which ones they are and what they're all about. Other research and cases are described in detail but not cited at all. I have no idea how to find these papers and materials; I'd have to take a stab at Google Scholar with the author name or topic as keywords and hope for the best. Yet, other work is cited with a reference in the footnote and proper bibliographic notes at the end of the text. Why? Everyone, cite everything, every time.

I was also left wondering how much inspiration Totaro and Wainwright drew from the volume that they praise and cite the most: Gilbert's "What the Nose Knows." I haven't read it, but it left me wondering what this text adds, aside from the COVID-19 update, anecdotes, and interviews. Also, Gilbert's title is so much better than the title of this text. If the authors were to be inspired by anything, then why not a clever and snappy title like that one.

Overall, I was engaged and learned a lot about our mysterious and often neglected fifth sense. I hope that this work and the general increase in awareness of anosmia and hyposmia (reduced ability to scent) as a result of the pandemic will boost research and technological innovations on odours and olfaction.

this was a very good piece as someone suffering from a muted sense of smell post COVID. A second round purchase for most libraries.