to think this couple in the guardian are strange and this was not an appropriate subject for a book?

(I don't think he would have given a shit about planning for the fence)

Read my post at the bottom of page 5, I think I have figured out what happened with the sale of the land.

But the fence is completely true, if you google their names you'll see the reporting and the images captured of the fencing and Collins dressed in black

That will only have netted them a few grand, at best, though. I assume they're just writing it up so that anyone who fancies adapting it for the screen will need to pay them to option and then to actually do it -- potentially much bigger money than the kind of small advance two non-writers lending their name to a ghost-written 'Bad Thing That Happened To Us' memoir, depending on who's interested.

They lost a lot of money to that couple. I'm sure they were partly motivated by the advance payment. And why not?

As the noise and fear mounted, the civil case we had begun over the land we had paid for progressed at a snail’s pace.

I rest my case.

I think it's very hard to excerpt from a book into a newspaper article because you have to cut so much out that it reads very jarringly. I suspect reading the book would be a much better experience because it would flow better and you wouldn't go from 'nice new neighbours' to 'deranged stalkers'. There clearly was a strong friendship between them for a time if Collins referred to the author as being like a father to him, but you don't really get a sense of that in the article.

There's mention that the bloke was involved with organised crime. Maybe he also owed money to the kind of people who would make sure they got their pound of flesh and he decided that the best option was suicide?

If some of these 'I didn't see anything wrong with the writing' posts are to be believed I can't wait to see the Good Reads reviews.

Completely agree with previous posters that this sounded like it was written by AI!

I agree with others on here, I can't see anything wrong with it. I would have done the same thing probably.

I can understand writing to work through trauma.

That does not excuse decisions to publish it.

The whole thing was obviously AI but that bit was the most AI!

“The kitchen smelled faintly of badgers and despair” 😆😆😆

It's their story to tell I suppose, but an article length of their awful writing is more than enough for me, double I could get through an entire book written in that style.

I read this too and found it unsettling. I thought the couple didn’t look like they matched and didn’t act like they knew each other very well— and were delusional just in a different non-violent way. My guess is that one of them works in publishing or something and has been given a leg up.

It’s a weird story. While I have no problem believing that very unpleasant neighbours in some sort of bizarre folie a deaux could make your life a nightmare, there was a few things that didn’t stack up. Firstly, they supposedly couldn’t afford the land they wanted, and which the seller promised them (said seller, Bryn, seems to vanish from the narrative despite the fact that he reneged on his promise and got them into this mess in the first place), then the new ‘neighbours’ ask them for a lend of money to help buy said land on yet another promise, and despite them having already been burned once they do this. The story doesn’t state the exact acreage involved, but with the 25k they seemingly had knocking about to lend to people who were essentially randoms, and if the description of the land as water meadow is correct, they could have potentially negotiated a sale of at least two acres at that amount from ‘Bryn’, or even as much as six acres if it was classified as ‘rough grazing’, which is only 4k-6k an acre. Then there’s the fence. The type described cannot be erected by one guy on his todd and would be in breech of planning at the hight described, it would also be expensive as security fence costs at least £250 a panel and requires a certain amount of ground work or thousands of kilos of ballast unless you want it to blow over in the next light breeze. It'd cost thousands to erect and it’s not something you can just knock up on a whim.
While there’s probably a kernel of truth to this sorry tale I can’t help feeling that elements of it don’t sit right.

I wonder what will happen to the land now. Maybe the house couple will be able to buy it

Writing books after trauma seems to be a thing. Waterstone's had a whole shelf of misery memoirs. Of course, you don't here from the people who don't write these books, or fail to find a publisher.

It did seem badly written. Perhaps AI was used by the Guardian to edit it?

They, arguably, got off lightly. Their water supply had already been interfered with. The guy had access to amphetamines and there's other really nasty stuff that could be added to water.

I read it yesterday in Guardian. I thought it was good to let people know how something like this can happen. But writing a book ??

I think the trouble with the tone is that this is an entire book edited down to just an extract, so things crop up that would be explained naturally over a book, but suddenly appear with no real reference. There's no space to build up tension or set-ups when it's just an extract, so that's what gives it that weird AI-flavour, which is a shame because the writing could actually be very good but they've gone with prioritising the story (which is very sellable).

Yeah, I would expect more from the Guardian than to serialise this terribly written account, even if they (their journalists) did not write it themselves.

Who are we to question how they should be dealing with trauma?
Writing about it seems quite sensible to me anyways…

And if financial aspects play a role: Why shouldn’t they?

This targeted campaign of harassment, stalking and what must have felt like attempted murder (the fire bombs) was financially and emotionally expensive, as was mentioned in the article…

I certainly feel sympathy for the loved ones of the perpetrators. But that doesn’t negate the rights of their victims.

Sometimes it can be therapy, writing it all down. You know, if people don't want to read it they don't have to. So not really sure what your problem is with other people sharing their story?

Bingo. And by about paragraph 5 I was thinking 'I wonder how that would go down in Wales (or Cornwall also)', never mind the closing lines of this piece. Not sure they would identify the smell of a badger if one trotted on its hind legs through the kitchen holding a can of Pledge.

"Well they write well for a start, so I can see why they would want to apply those skills"

I couldn't disagree more. The terrible writing made me tune out of the article before I got to the end, I just couldn't carry on with it. If they wanted their story heard, I'd have thought a Netflix documentary, of the ilk of Should I Marry A Murderer or Sweet Bobby would be a better vehicle.