Thread 4: 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 ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

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

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

I think one of the doctors commenting on this thread has said that, on reading the letters, it sounds as if Tim does have an illness but that it is mild and indolent (causing little or no pain).

He isn't getting worse. So I'm wondering if the miraculous reversal of symptons and the brain scan of the third book was going to result in him in future books remaining in decent health.

I have lost track a bit - has she agreed that the timeline of the diagnosis in the book was changed?

Why have they not provided this letter then, I wonder

…in the words of Father Ted “the money was just resting in my account”

No she hasn't but the medical letters she has posted for everyone to scrutinise say it was 2015 when he was displaying symptoms and a potential diagnosis of CBD was mooted.

Surely many people have medical letters saying they might have something or something is a possibility and needs to be investigated further? I can think of examples in my family when somebody was told something could be very serious, and then, thankfully, it wasn't, or when somebody is being monitored over the course of several years in case symptoms develop into something bigger. How do the Winns explain Moth being a CBD outlier in terms of his longevity and lifestyle?

So some of the hardest days of her life are not her husband’s “terminal” diagnosis or losing her house but a media storm pointing out it’s not true with no real consequences…

of all the correspondence she only needed to show the letter summarising the pre walk diagnosis

at the moment it looks like a messed up timeline which would be fine if auto fiction

also, her lack of care and the taking of the painkillers makes more sense if he was pre diagnosis but not 100% which the correspondence suggests

I actually think she could have written much more honestly (glossing over the theft of course!) and it would still have struck a chord with people

I wonder what that might be? (Can't read beyond the paywall bit). Intrigued.

Based on the letter evidence she has publicly shared it would seem so, even if she didn't mean to. The 2015 letter reads very much like it's the first time any medical professional has suggested CBD as a possibility.

I’m intrigued as well. Raising Hare? Haven’t read it but it’s bestseller. Is somebody bankrupt/terminally ill in it?

The Outrun? 🤔

If they bought the derelict property in France to stop a developer buying it:

a) Why didn't the relative who owned the adjacent property offer them that to live in instead of seeing them homeless?

b) If a developer was so mad for it, why not sell it to him/her for as much as they could get once they were facing destitution?

Redheadedstepchild · Today 20:34
I bet you wished you never started this. A kind of idle observation about a book you'd read a few years ago turning up the paper as not what it seemed and now it's a full time job curating the thread.

The Observer's investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou said something along the lines of she hadn't expected the scale of the reaction to her report. I feel pretty much the same. When I started the first thread when the story broke I had just wondered if anyone else was feeling like I was about the news. I was expecting a few posts perhaps sharing my disappointment and slightly stunned 'I don't know what to think', a few 'never heard of hers' and a few 'get a grips'. I've been on MN a long time but I wouldn't say AIBU is my natural or regular environment on here. I'm here for other topics really. I went to bed expecting about a dozen posts to wake up to the next morning.

Now we are on the fourth thread and I've stuck with it because I feel a sense of responsibility having started the first thread. It is clearly something people want to discuss, whatever their viewpoint, and that includes me. I've read RW/SW's three books after all and intended to see the film and read her fourth book. I'm also someone who has a bit of an interest in what makes people tick.

I'm not here on a high horse with a pitchfork, a flaming torch and a ducking stool. I'm here as a flawed human being, like we all are. I was genuinely sorry to read The Observer reports. I've kept my eye on things because I didn't want this to be a witch hunt or a pile on, just an open and honest debate. Also, when a minority of posters strayed in to commenting about disabled people and disability benefits in general, or crossed the line about MW/TW's health, I made it clear that is not in the spirit of the threads and I was not at all alone in that. As a hive mind and a nest of vipers I think we've done a fairly good job for over three threads so far. This is evidenced by the fact that we have had little to no deletions, (unlike a notorious thread mentioned by a pp). We might be a salty lot at times but I think we've kept reasonably to the path of a fair discussion.

The impression I got is that people are quite shocked that RW stole so much money from her employer. That is awful, and it goes completely against the narrative they’ve created for themselves, and I think it’s made people feel like they’ve been hoodwinked, so they rightly feel angry.

That's what I thought!

Given they’re so matey with the top dog doctor I think a statement from him would have been wiser than these letters

will be interesting what the next move is but I always think people are more accepting when someone owns it

her response is not in line with her supposed awakening on the walks tbh

You just buy a NDA and innocence and guilt is sorted. It's not a witch hunt. It's reasonable to discuss these things on forums. Why shouldn't we. They discussed it all in the media for years and were at best very selective with the truth. If you want to put your self out there and make money from telling people about your experiences then if the authenticity is questioned of those experiences, it reasonable for it to be discussed in public.

Also, I don’t think the concern is that the illness is completely made up.

It’s that the reversal of symptoms has been misrepresented.

I’m writing a book at the moment about a difficult period of my own life

(what this will do to the memoir business is a different story).

I’m surprised at some things which I’ve misremembered and dates which have all got squished together. But I have notes from the time, and letters and messages and can double check.

But this is not that.

How they lost the house and when he got diagnosis are the fundamental backbone of the story. You can’t forgive lying about it because the descriptions are nice.

I think your posts are rational & measured OP & this has been ( for me ) one of the
most interesting threads for a long time.

and you write beautifully too.

You can buy amazing properties in France relatively cheaply, especially so a few years ago. A ruin on a patch of brambles is not going to cost much unless it sits on top of an oil well. Maybe the other developer was that Daniel Day Lewis character from that 'I drink your milkshake!' film?

I’m not sure which memoir it is - it doesn’t give any further details in the article.

I am intrigued by this paragraph in the article though - anyone know which memoir the journalist is referring to here?

Sometimes money isn’t part of the motivation so much as the writer’s desire to make themselves the hero or heroine of their own story. Someone I once knew, who was involved in the literary world, became fixated with a best-selling travel writer who had spent time in Central Asia. At one point, she even claimed to have received a marriage proposal from him – although she also said around this time that her phone was being tapped by MI5.

This obsession eventually led to her writing a memoir about her own adventures in the same part of the world: an account that, for readers in the know, bore unnerving similarities to the travel writer’s original volume.

By far the oddest element of the book was her claim to have been close to the scene of one of the July 7/7 terror attacks and to have cradled a dying passenger.

Perhaps she truly was a real-life Florence Nightingale, but it seemed odd she hadn’t been called to give evidence to the exhaustive enquiry that followed the bombings.

I then discovered, via a chance conversation, that sixth-form girls at my old school had picked the book for their reading group. I told a member of staff why I had qualms about the book’s authenticity, so the group turned their conversation into a discussion about a writer’s duty to truth and how to best spot what we’d now call misinformation.

In terms of the timeline, if it's to be believed the very long walk did happen, which the overall view seems to be it did, at least in part, but perhaps with more than one bus ride involved, and with a mono motivation of being on the run; and if we believe that was in 2013, but the diagnosis/more apparent symptoms than previously presented happened in 2015.... could.... could all that walking have in fact been the opposite of good for Moth?

Sorry, that was a rambling enough sentence to belong in tonight's statement! 😄

I think people are all over this is because of the unfairness. Not just the initial primary injustice of what she did financially but also the subsequent deception of getting the publishing deal for her 'unflinchingly honest' real life personal story.

How many people would love to get a major publishing deal for their first book? It's 'dream come true' stuff. Countless people try, a few succeed, but the number who get the kind of deal she got, with the most prestigious literary publishing house in the country is vanishingly small. And it's a case of hats-off to those who make it, whose work contains that special something that editors and acquisitions teams recognise will make a bestseller.

In her case it was the personal angle and the extraordinary real life experience. The courage of doing what they did in the circumstances they were in with his diagnosis - the sheer sort of fuck-it attitude, with all the ingredients of love overcoming everything, extremes of nature, mild peril and death. That's what transformed it from being a low-level, small advance debut novel like many others, and pushed it to lead-title status, with the artwork, the marketing, the PR campaign that goes along with it.

And now it appears that she made all that up, which means she cheated her way to the top. The golden ticket to bestselling author, major blockbuster film, future lucrative book deals and millionaire status was obtained on false pretences. It goes against all the values of courage, faith, humanity that her book seemed to uphold.