Thread 3: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

I meant the bit about not actually doing the walks. I suspect this couple are the same. Once you've discovered a 'true-life' author has told a whopping lie it does make you question if any part of a book is true. (Not that I've read Campbell or Winn. Not my kind of thing.)

Not sure if I’m sceptical or just plain nosy but when I saw the film (I hadn’t read the book), I wanted to know more about how they had lost the house as I thought the film lost some of its dramatic drive from skipping over this. Sally / Raynor had a lot of time to plan what to do when they lost the house (which they must have known they would) which makes me wonder how much of the subsequent narrative was planned.

If she is an embezzler / con woman perhaps she is adept at finding those emotional hooks which is why the book resonated with so many.

Exactly the reason TSP has been enabled to gather a momentum. People so invested in hope that it’s a case of ‘why let the facts get in the way of a good story.’

Just marking my place,thanks for the new thread .

I still wonder if we will find out they were living in a flat in Cornwall and going on the occasional hike all the time they were meant to be living in a tent.

What they could easily do is make a very generous donation to a certain charity who have been unwiitingly dragged into this fiasco because of the lies told?

Yes. This is why they wouldn’t fact check - it’s in the author and the contract will make that clear.

I'm late to this conversation, but what a disappointment. I also didn't warm to the characters as such...

I've lost a lot of faith in books like these, and take them with a pinch of salt these days, which is such a shame. Ever since A Million Little Pieces, which I'm sure has been mentioned in the thread? Anyway, urgh. Some people are just fucking horrible, aren't they.

The kindness of people lending them places to live is pretty odd also ( I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but having worked in housing I know that the west country along with most rural/ holiday areas has an acute homeless and people priced out of accommodation problem . Empty flats and farms and potential owners just waiting to find deserving people to live in rent free them just doesn't happen more than once in a blue moon .. But it happened to them twice apparently! Actually 3 times if they were offered a council house in Wales ( again super lucky at short notice where most places have huge waiting lists)

I know the farm they were invited to rewild checks out. I've found the person on IG (who had tagged RW before) and he's involved in investment and cider making, which fits the description RW gave.

They had converted their barn into holiday accommodation. That was their only known source of income (topped up by the £48 weekly tax credits).

As for the son, I'm not sure where the info came from that he was living in Newquay, I've only read that on here (and I'm very familiar with 'Raynor's' books, interviews and the articles of the last few days). But a generous answer could be that they didn't want him to know the reality of how much they were struggling.

Place marking

The link in this post from
@Orangesandlemons77 on the previous thread is awful! Absolutely demonstrates the wickedness of what they have done, if Timothy's illness is not actually definitely CBD, and they are aware this might be the case (which they must be, surely?).

(Link might not have survived the cutting and pasting, sorry)

On the illness, I noticed this on Wikipedia, seems consultants have been recommending it to their patients
The neurologist Rhys Davies, in Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, commented that they did not often review best sellers, "still less travel books", but added that The Salt Path had "a neurological twist", given Moth's diagnosis.[9] Mentioning the value of laughter as "the best medicine", he describes the book as a tale of "the indomitable human spirit".[9] He finds the Winns a powerful case for "the benefits of positive action and of physical therapy, even for the ghastliest of neurodegenerative conditions."[9] He recommends the book to clinicians and patients alike.[9]

(sorry, had to remove the link as it wouldn't post, pretty sure its was messed up but it was in thread 2)

Marina Hyde, speculating about what options were open to the Walkers, said they could just say ‘Oh, we made financial mistakes, but we’re all about the future and we’re not going to go into it now’, but that she thought people were too invested for this, and said ‘Put it this way, somewhere will be getting a new neuro unit.’

Your observation resonates. I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m upset with her and I think this is it. I wanted her to be blameless in how she ended up homeless because I want to be blameless for how I’ve ended up where I am in life. I needed a story like that to feel good and hopeful. Now that she’s not blameless anymore, I need a new ‘saint’. But she never said she had never made mistakes in her life. She only implied that the particular way they lost the house seemed unfair to her. She nudged us in that direction but really, we the readers made her blameless. The ultimate reason I think that people are so invested in ‘true’ stories being absolutely ‘true’ is that we all desperately want to believe that life has a redemptive narrative arc. That things happen for a reason. That we aren’t just here to shit, reproduce and die. ‘Raynor’ gave us the possibility that maybe our lives could have a narrative arc like hers did. And now we know it doesn’t so ours probably don’t either. Until we find a new jesus figure. Another one will be along shortly, don’t worry.

I would love the silver lining of all this to be a very chunky donation to PSPA or neurological unit.

Yes, I just got a bit tired of saying ‘Publishers don’t generally fact check memoirs.’ This is why.

MH and RO had a couple of interesting things to say about adapting memoirs for screen, that you often have to invent entirely new minor characters even if the people referenced in the memoir were composite/disguised, because you have to put an actor on the screen who has a physical body, an accent etc, which you may not have specified in the memoir.

If I’ve learnt anything over these three threads, it’s that I will never fit in at a book club. I’m perplexed at how many people get really arsey over a differing opinion of a book - surely that’s the point of the club?

Yes that was from here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Path

I meant the publishers, which was waht I was responding to.

As a member of 2 book clubs, where we have healthy disagreements but respect each others' views and have become good friends, I've also been shocked at how many people here have apparently been ostracised for disliking The Salt Path. A book which, incidentally, attracted opposing views within both my clubs.

It’s interesting that Tim only needs a long walk just as it gets time for Sally to write a new book.

Yes, i read this and am halfway through book 2 (borrowed from the l;ibrary) .
Having read the article, it makes me not want to bother continuing it

I remember writing on here about the children and feeling it was a bit much that they were asked for money and stressed out by their parents doing something daft (my own parents could be similar and I knew how that felt) and got short shrift..