A review by taniabotes
Papillon by Henri Charrière

2.0

I always find it a bit unsettling when I don't enjoy a book everyone raves about. My problem with Papillon was twofold. A lot of people compared it to Shantaram when recommending it to me. Gregory David Roberts created such vivid characters, and Papillon is really only about one person (you never get to know much about anyone else). Secondly, I didn't like Papillon, the person, he never felt real, he seemed too good to be true. If he was really such an amazing, noble person how would he end up with a life sentence in the first place. The cherry on the cake was when I read that some of his story was actually taken from other inmates experiences. This is a very popular book, so you may well enjoy it, even though it wasn't for me.