To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The real Salt Path: how the couple behind a bestseller le...

I read Raynor Winn's book The Salt Path and her other two books. I was looking forward to seeing the film at some point and to reading her next book. I felt sorry to read about the challenges the couple had faced, especially with regard to losing their family home and with Moth's health. Now, having read the article in today's Observer, I feel a bit stunned and am not sure what to think.

I think that was certainly one of the slightly odd aspects of the book, along with the vague and implausible account of losing the house at the start. I did just mentally file it under ‘the children asked not to be featured in any significant way’, though.

I have quite a few writer friends who’ve written occasional non-fiction books about their own experiences, and whose immediate family members have asked not to be included. So one friend’s memoir of living in an unusual place for a year looks as if she’s a single parent to a toddler, because her older child and husband said they didn’t want to be written about.

Just read a 1 star review on amazon dating from 2021 titled; 'Is this a hoax?'.

Seems so. The only wonder is it's taken so long to come out tbh.

Haha true! It does sound kind of exhausting though! And strange that she thought she wouldn’t be caught after writing books about it. Presumably she decided to write the book to make money, and it obviously made a lot of money, but I wonder if she was ever concerned that it would eventually expose her?

I wondered about that as well so I had a Google and it seems like the author and her husband are wanted for questioning over a real life murder.
https://time.com/6196505/where-the-crawdads-sing-controversy-delia-owens-book/

Absolute pair of grifters and I’m not even surprised, the books tone was actually so self righteous and self pitying, and nasty about people she clearly felt superior to.

Someone upthread suggested that the combination of the NDA, the death of the man she embezzled, and the death of the man who loaned the money might have made them brave.

And if they'd been calling themselves Winn maybe they thought no one would connect them to the other stuff.

I think they got greedy and their egos decided that since some time had passed they'd be fine.

Exactly this. I would have loved to have been proven wrong!

Why on earth has Mumsnet taking away the " laugh" emoji?

Probably got Meg signed up for the Duchess Diaries

Is it really possible ‘Moth’ was never ill at all?

Not quite the same at all I know but it reminds me of the Captain Tom fiasco with his daughter and the money she earned. And now she's written a book on 'dealing with grief'.
Good grief!

Both women are scoundrels and have profited from mistruths.

Once you have had a book published under a fake name you can’t control how many people connect with it and amplify it, how many it sells etc. Your publishing contract possibly compels you to undertake some publicity which you hope will be press only without photos so agree. Then you have to start appearing in TV etc but the two people you defrauded and borrowed from are dead so you hope it will all be ok. And it was for a long time… it seems agreeing to a film was a step too far in terms of publicity.

Am hoping the press will pick up on the outrage both here and on X and amplify this story more in this week’s papers. The X post has almost 250k views now.

I wonder how Gillian A and Jason I feel about their roles in the film?

I wondered that too! Wish they hadn’t.

That's covered in the observer articles

Yeah that’s very true. Maybe they thought they had to agree to the film, because not agreeing would make them look suspicious. Just a thought.

They must have thought about the risk, especially when the book was, unexpectedly, a huge success, and the film was not only optioned (lots of books do, and nothing ever happens), but then made, with two big stars.

I imagine you could sort of get sucked in to the process, though. A delighted agent and editor telling you sales are huge, publisher publicity person booking you in for festivals and tv appearances, the film option getting picked up, the producer casting two stars etc etc — you’d sort of keep forging ahead, knowing it was all likely to come crashing down, preparing what you are going to say…

ETA. Which does partly explain why they both came across slightly oddly in interviews. I saw that one other people had referenced, Rick Stein talking about their cider-making enterprise, and thought ‘Oh, these people are a bit strange.’

God I bet the Daily Mail will be all over this soon enough. That’s probably a good thing though. I can see her Wikipedia entry has been updated with today’s article.

I think you're right. The combination of brand new identities along with the key principals having died made them think they'd get away with it. Also they quite probably didn't think it would become a bestseller. As a PP said, where they went wrong was allowing it to be made into a film, which brought it to much wider attention.

Even so, it's remarkable to me that they weren't caught earlier. They've done quite a lot of publicity over the years and their photographs have appeared in numerous papers and magazines. Surely someone would have recognised them as Sally and Tim Walker?

Writers don't usually have a say over film rights. From what I understand they are owned by the publishers and sold off as and when in various ways eg a tv series here, a film in another territory there. It looks like Sally Walker/Raynor Winn was a consultant on the film so she'd have been paid that way. Quite brazen, really, to do the promo for it.

I hope nobody has a back-end deal. Sometimes actors will take low pay and a percentage of the profits. Surely nobody's going to go and see it now?

Where’s the laugh emoji when you need it? @MNHQ please bring it back!

No national newspaper (of quality) would spend 3 pages in the main section on unsubstantiated claims. Too risky

I find it interesting she sat in recent interviews as let Gillian /Jason tell the story of the gross injustices they had faced while not saying much herself

Gillian played Margaret Thatcher and Jason played the faithful disciple of a genocidal magical dictator, so I imagine they’re fine with playing peiole whose moral credentials are pretty dubious!😀

I started the book the abandoned it for 2 reasons. Firstly I looked after my late husband during his lengthy Parkinsons deteriorationand felt no desire to read about someone else's neurodegenerative disorder. Secondly, from my professional background I was very dubious about his disorder as his apparent recovery made no sense at all.
I thought I was just a cynic, but apparently not ......