Thread 8: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Well, this has turned out to be slightly longer than the dozen or so replies I expected when I started the first thread!

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

2nd Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

3rd Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

4th Observer
‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...

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husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting.

To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with possible visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail.

We have done amazingly well together - in the main that is, not mentioning any names but you know who you are! - for seven threads so far. I can't be on the threads as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion ticking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

No saltiness. Keep to the path. Thank you.

I'm off shopping I've paused the damn thing. But I totally get it now. What an amazing story if it's true you just want to will it into life, and somehow, she did.

It’s all fine when you’re on the Yellow Brick Road, waiting for your salvation from the Wizard less so when it turns out the Wizard is a fraud… or maybe even a witcn and not a good one at that.

The singularly most astonishing thing to me in this whole debacle is that GA loved the book so much she wanted to acquire the film rights! Is this actually true?

I also wonder whether she's using 'terminally ill' in its absolute loosest sense - in as much as anyone alive today is terminal, we are all going to die. So in that respect she is right, Moth is terminal. But only in the same way that we all are.

She’s not ‘legally obliged’ to reveal anything at all — she’s not under oath being cross-examined. However, she chose to write a memoir which she purported to be truthful, and in which she depicted herself and her husband as victims of their own trusting nature, to the extent of losing their home, rather than having lost it as a consequence of her own theft from an employer.

@Charlize43

Yes, I completely agree with you. I don't feel this permeates my life, or ever has done, in the way it seems to now with some women, and I've lived in a couple of less salubrious inner city neighbourhoods. Doing safety checks, thinking twice about leaving the house, changing a walking route because a man's parked nearby.

I don't recognise that world at all.

Yes, she's spoken about it in interviews. How she listened to the audio book in her car, wanted to option it, but discovered it had already been optioned.

I'm still boggling somewhat over SalRay wanting Pamela Anderson to play her on screen. I have nothing against PamAn whatsoever but surely if someone was going to be portraying you on screen you want them to have the best acting ability possible.

Maybe SalRay saw her version involving her and Moth slo-mo running around the SWCP.

This, 100%
plus if you sign a contract of factual accuracy with your publisher, it’s reasonable to expect that your book is… er …. factually accurate.

I know many felt the same as GA hence the huge sales but it just continues to amazes me that anyone could have loved it.

I didn't, until only narrowly escaped from a crazed attacker in broad daylight in my lovely leafy MC village.

Until then, i.walked happily back from work, or evening classes,.or nights out. But that shook me to the core.

It took me a long time (and a house move) before I felt like walking on my own even in the day time

That was always my defence that's it’s grounded in a kind of Buddhist understanding. By confronting our own mortality, we strip away illusion and are able to live more fully, more presently. In losing everything, we are offered a strange freedom: the chance to place our faith not in possessions or status, but in the redemptive power of nature and the quiet strength of our own will.

It’s through that surrender through walking the path with nothing but the self that we begin to regain control of the life stream. But you don't lie or cheat or think ill of others. That piece is sadly missing.

Thanks for the heads up. I had only seen the 1080p version but now when I look the 4K version is available weighing in at 11.83GB.

It’s about the sentiment of story I think & trials of Raymoth achieving against odds.

I know this Penguin PR video has been posted before, but I just rewatched and simply can't get over how odd RW comes across and how her answers are pretty much word for word lifted from TSP. Was she asked to speak with dramatic languange? The whole clip is bonkers, maybe apart from her book suggestion at the end!

I don't think she did want that though. I thought that story originated from her getting a call while in her garden from the film people to say GA was going to play her. She shouted through to Tim to tell him and he misheard her saying Pamela Anderson.

I have caught up! Been reading from the beginning but gosh, these threads go by like lightning!

I haven't read the book or seen the film but I'm very interested in what's going on (I studied film at uni so always interested in film-related goings-on).

What I have found is that pre-Observer article, someone posted on imdb (Jun 26th) stating that the book is "heavily fictionalised". Makes me wonder who posted that and if they knew things were afoot re. the article.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27766440/review/rw10595909/?ref_=tturv_29

ETA: or if the person knew SW and TW and the real reason they lost their home.

Aye that's the one from idope.se !

Lots of reviews of the book on Amazon have raised issues too so i dont think the imdb points to insider knowledge - I think just some people were less willing to believe it, and rightly so. As soon as I finished the book, I said to myself "is that it?" and was left with a feeling that things didn't make sense. One of the first things I did was to look at the one star Amazon reviews and was glad to see others felt the same, despite the overwhelming number of gushing 5 star reviews.

Ah ok. That makes more sense. Maybe Moth can add premature deafness to his list of ailments.

@AldoGordo just saw the One Show Interview re: your post.

Ray is on script ‘financial dispute with a lifetime friend’.

JI says Raymoth were ‘conned out of everything’. Is this an exaggerated version of events told to him by the couple? ‘Conned’ is an interesting word.

Also JI says ‘you were told to go home & prepare for the end’ were they? At an early stage.

JI is very moved by Moth’s surprise camera appearance. I think his huge admiration for him is very genuine. Moth is strikingly very humble here and says something to paraphrase like ‘it was only about little, old insignificant me too’. JI thinks Moth radiates unusual likability ‘a tall, slim Father Christmas’.

It always struck me as significant that TWS skips over entirely RW’s efforts to have what would become TSP published.

It goes from her writing it, humbly and apparently with no thought it would ever see print, as a birthday present for Moth, to the suggestion of publication coming from her daughter, and then goes to their pleasure when her article appears in the Big Issue, not in the humble position at the back where she expected but n a prominent position. It’s deliberately underplayed, placed just after Moth has a scan that shows marked deterioration, so R says she doesn’t feel like celebrating, and they’re so humble and otherworldly that they get the week wrong (but luckily the Big Issue seller was so struck by her piece he’s kept a copy.)

But absolutely no hint of the genuine ambition that must have propelled her to revise the MS, write a synopsis and a pitch letter, research agents, send it off etc. I think because it makes her look too focused on being a writer, on having other people read her work, on professional success.

I've watched a large number of her video interviews about TSP since the Observer article broke. They all follow a near identical pattern. Zero deviation from the 'official narrative'. A bit like the R4 comedy slot 'Just a minute'.

On the other hand some interviewers have described SW as funny and down to earth, outside of the interview.

I get the sense that as the author of TSP, she is trying to control the narrative. If the narrative is 100% based on facts, then I don't see why that is necessary....

PS - yet to hear back from my friend who works as a body language expert for the French police in criminal cases.

No, I think that was a joke. She told Moth Gillian Anderson was playing her, and he thought she meant Pamela Anderson.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat re: Penguin, wouldn’t that be like biting the hand that feeds with another novel & ££ in wings?

JI thinks Moth radiates unusual likability ‘a tall, slim Father Christmas’.

I saw so many interviews with Jason gushingly describing Moth as above and it always set my teeth on edge. Nobody is that nice all the time.

Poor old Jase must be cringing so hard over that now.