Who was reading what on The White Lotus?
July 12-13, 2025
An anaylsis of the reading material of the hit show’s characters may offer clues into the whodunit mystery, writes Nicholas Adams-Dzierzba
If you’ve watched (binged, even) The White Lotus, you will know that there is a bit of “upstairs-downstairs” to it. The show is set in a luxury resort, with wealthy guests, served by low-paid staff.
Bad things happen, usually in the first episode, and the viewer then has to figure out whodunnit (and who dies).
It’s been described as “rich people behaving badly” which is about right. Intriguingly, many of the main characters are shown reading books. What, if anything, can be read into their choices? And, if any of the characters had actually read the books they were shown with on their holidays, could the tricky predicaments in which they found themselves have been avoided?
The Ratliffs are a family of five, from the American south (they are white.) The matriarch, Victoria (Parker Posey) is self-centred and inward looking. She is shown reading The Beautiful and Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald, about a couple that destroys itself, spectacularly.
I ran this title past the well-known London bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud (a bibliotherapist is one who encourages reading for therapeutic effect) to see what she made of it. Berthoud says she doesn’t often “prescribe” Fitzgerald to those in need of book therapy, because he’s “brilliant” but also “a bit depressing.” But more about her prescriptions in a moment.
The family patriarch, Timothy Ratliff (played by Jason Isaacs) is a businessman, and supposedly a pillar of the community, except he’s done some shady deals, and he’s about to go broke (he may also be headed to prison). He’s reading Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, a lifestyle book about biohacking, which is supposed to increase your own, as opposed to your book's, shelf life. The author, once an amateur boxer, studied maths before medicine. Maybe the character needs his own reinvention?
One of the Ratliff’s adult children, Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), has come to Thailand to explore what life might be like in a Buddhist monastery. She’s keen to give up all her worldly goods, until she experiences the reality (cold porridge, when she prefers overnight oats.) She is reading The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, which Berthoud found intriguing.
“Laing is a bit of an intellectual observer of culture in the modern world,” she says. The author wrote about living in New York having moved there in her mid-thirties, only for her partner to leave her abruptly. Each chapter is dedicated to an artist who created something significant while living with solitude, so perhaps there is a message there, too.
Piper's brother, Saxon (played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, the son of Arnold and Maria Shriver) is reading When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, which suggests that he, too, aspires to be a better man. But Berthoud isn’t impressed, saying: “When you read non-fiction, self-help type books, they’re speaking to your conscious brain. You’re not entering into the world in such a tangible way as you do when you’re reading a novel.”
“There are no images, which means you create your own. You create the world in a much more vivid and personal way than you enter into a film. You become the characters in the book when you read them and they thus have a transformative effect on your life.”
The youngest child, Lochlan (Sam Nivola) is reading Hunger by Knut Hamsun, which makes sense: he’s a self-described people-pleaser.
Besides the Ratliffs, viewers are introduced to three women (old friends who invariably pair off and bitch about the absent third.). Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) is an actress making her way through My Name is Barbra, Streisband’s 970-page autobiography; Laurie (Carrie Coon) is a divorced lawyer passed over for promotion at her firm is reading Modern Lovers by Emma Straud (a tale of three former bandmates in the eighties who have gone from jamming together to having kids that play upon their nerves); and Kate (Leslie Bibb), a Texan Trump voter, who isn’t given a book, and doom scrolls on her phone instead.
Can the answer to any of their problems be found in these books?
Berthoud says the "slow burn" of literature is an important part of the therapy. Carrying characters around with you as your own life moves on is important, as is choosing a story you don’t yet empathise with. Yet even she finds it hard to find the time to sit and read, although she does listen to audiobooks “all the time. While I’m painting, doing house work, driving. I’ve always got an audiobook on.”
For record, only one of the many staff at the resort, Belinda (played by Natasha Rothwell), is shown reading. What book does she get? Surrounded by Narcissists by Thomas Erikson, a Swedish bestseller.