Review of Chapter 3 by Yaroslavna Lasytsya

A smoky wood, old as a hushed chapel and rich as a well-thumbed tale, opens “Chapter 3”, and the dusk of it leans close. In that deep-brown shade, apricot and peach, juicy and tart as stolen sunlight, spill their golden shimmer over the grain, keeping the cobwebbed must of forgotten rooms at bay, unlike that shadowed dust that haunts Bois Talisman. So the wood, lifted and lit from within, walks easily through the hours of the day, its shoulders warmed by fruit-bright noon. I honour the depth of the sandalwood here, dark and slow, breathing an incense-like smoke that curls upward as if from temple stones. And it is no wonder, knowing how Ajmal seeds and tends its fragrant groves in India and Indonesia, where the trees drink monsoon, year upon year, and learn to speak in resin and prayer. As time unspools, fruits and berries step forward, bright-eyed and laughing, yet never tumbling into syrup or stickiness; they keep their crisp, playful bite, skipping along the branches rather than sagging them with sugar. In this dance and counterdance, wood and fruit together make “Chapter 3” sing its own name, special and strange, intriguing as a story begun in medias res. It is not the first leaf of the book, not a shy prologue; it starts already full of colour and consequence, as if we had slipped, dreaming, into the middle of the tale and found it in full stride. Rose and osmanthus, tender-eyed and sure-footed, carry the heart of the perfume like two young shepherds moving through orchard and glade. They do not preach in thick, predictable hymns, nor do they crowd the path; instead they keep the scent flowing, soft as a stream over stones, smoothing the journey without drowning it in their petals. Amber comes down like late afternoon, warming the musk to a quiet, glowing ember, simple and elegant as a well-laid hearth. It roots the woods and the fruits and the flowers in a gentle, enduring earth, so that everything stands steady and long-lived, hour after hour, like light lingering stubbornly in western fields. “Chapter 3” is a marvellous unisex song, its character clear and original, its notes and their making of the highest order. It walks by day or night with equal grace, in the boardroom’s dry air or the private hush of a date, its projection balanced, its sillage measured like a voice that knows exactly how far to travel. This perfume speaks of status and steadied confidence, of an individuality that will not apologise for itself. It does not shout across the hills, nor does it hide in the hedgerows; it speaks in a warm, rich voice, with now and then a mischief-lit spark at the corner of the eye. And in its sound I keep hearing that mellifluous baritone of Richard Burton, reading “Fern Hill” as if the world were made of remembered afternoons. He was one of those rare, rare souls who could charm and seduce with his voice alone. So I keep listening, as the scent, like the poem, goes on.