Debbie Zapata's Reviews > Papillon

I had read this many years ago, and of course I've seen the movie more than once. I mean the classic one with Steve McQueen (sigh) as Papillon. So I knew the story but while I was living in Mexico I found the sequel at a used book table at one of the regular book fairs in the main plaza in town.

I never knew there was a sequel so I got it but promised myself to read this first. It had been a very long time since I read Papillon and some of it I didn't remember at all. But I enjoyed the book and rooted for Papi every time he made an escape attempt.

However, I did get a little tired this time of the way he presented himself as knowing everything about everything, being smarter and tougher then anyone else in any prison, but at the same time being an honorable man. Maybe he was really was all of that, but by the end I was rolling my eyes a bit, and I just wanted him to get to that last big escape attempt and be done with it. This is why I changed my original four stars to three. I think I was influenced to four stars by the image of Steve McQueen (sigh) in my head the whole time I was reading.

Oh, Papillon was called that because of a butterfly tattoo that he said he had at the base of his neck. But he also had plenty of other tattoos:
"On the right side of my chest I had a guard from Calvi; on the left, the head of a woman; just above the waist a tiger's head; on my spine, a crucified sailor, and across the kidneys, a tiger hunt with hunters, palm trees, elephants and tigers."

(I looked up to see what the 'guard from Calvi' might have been: the coat of arms from the Calvi region of Corsica. A red cross on a white shield.)

In reading a bit more about the author, I saw that the educated opinion these days is that most of the book was fiction, a compilation of experiences that Papillon heard from other prisoners, not events he had gone through himself. I will let those educated people worry about that. The story itself is good, and sometimes that is all that matters.