It is warm water

Everybody I like has told me to read this and I've finally done it and I'm sorry.

It has the texture of something that's good for you. Every page is a little inspirational tile and the tiles don't add up to a room. The boy travels, the boy learns a lesson, the lesson is announced, and then it's announced again in different weather. Nothing is ever difficult for longer than a paragraph.

I did it in a Sunday afternoon on the balcony with a coffee, which is my favourite way to read anything at all, and even that couldn't rescue it. It's warm water. Nothing offensive in it, no flavour either.

What actually annoyed me was Fatima. She waits. She is praised for waiting. The desert is stuffed with significance and the woman is furniture, and yes it's a parable and parables flatten people, but I've read two parables this year that managed not to do that.

Three, because I did finish it and because two people whose taste I properly trust genuinely love this book. What am I missing? If it arrived for you at seventeen at exactly the right moment I understand completely and I'm not going to argue with you about it over dinner.