Thread 13: 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's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 12 Observer reports currently available online: The real Salt Path | The Observer

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

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

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse welcome. It would be helpful to read at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently 12 interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

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 visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for twelve very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Have the sales or thefts of fudge gone up recently?
Will Simon's head ever turn up?
Has the shed of doubt yet burst at the seams?
Will the old charabanc hold up as a tour bus for our hip new band The Drive-By Scolders?
And finally, how much salt can we possibly cram into a giant pinch?

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

Yes! I find that just astonishing!

Are you able to post a screenshot of the 4 Aug Amazon review please, Herring?

I wonder if it was their moving love story & Ray going all out for Moth against the terrible odds. I wonder if she came to doubt more later hence perhaps a certain distancing & what she said (?)

I find this slightly odd, even for someone who was enthusiastic about the book, or who saw commercial potential in it. (It's not obvious which GA was.)

It struck me as something that would be very difficult to film in any conventional way -- most of it would be two people walking, not very fast, occasionally putting up a tent, or having some fleeting encounter with other people.

The 'nature redemption memoir' is such a cliché on film so easily -- something like The Outrun was able to do a better job because it focused more on the 'backstory' of the main character's alcoholism, so it was able to cut back and forth between her getting messy drunk in nightclubs in London and wrecking her relationship with the grey, solitary world of Papa Westray and tracking corncrakes. But because we get virtually nothing of the Walkers' backstory in TSP (for reasons which are now overwhelmingly obvious), the film only gives us a handful of scenes (courthouse steps, token scene with the children, packing and despairing, hiding under the stairs from the bailiffs) that predate them walking, so that's all we have.

I don't really understand why someone would be wild to buy the rights unless they thought the book was so successful that it would be a surefire hit...?

Well, there's at least one review on there (Donna Some Initial) who says she only read it because of the Mn threads!

"What you are telling me is amazing really"

Michael Portillo walking the SWCP with SW. 20.00-27.00

(1) Video | Facebook

I have to say that I haven't read it at all. None of it (except the extracts I've seen), so maybe I'm here under false pretences?

I'm actually here because, as a published author, I am interested in the reaction by and towards PRH and the general attitude towards authors, publishers and agents, because writing books isn't some middle class profession only entered into by those already monied and with the leisure to sit and scribble (I work a retail job to fund me, brought up five kids as a single mum and come from a resolutely WC background).

But I came to TSP via my very good friend, who is a voracious reader. She adored all three books and sang their praises. But she's not what I'd call a 'critical reader'. She loves Cornwall and the coast, and read the books as a travelogue of places she knows well. She was adamant that I ought to read them but the extracts that I had seen sounded... unconvincing. The dialogue sounded stilted and invented and - I have to admit it - I was jealous of the book's success when I, and many of my author friends, write damn good fiction that we struggle to sell.

But everything I read about TSP and subsequent books and every interview I saw featuring RayMoth made my skin prickle, and I decided that I just didn't like her, her writing voice or her topics. Maybe if she'd stuck to writing purely nature observational books, which is where her writing strength seems to lie, none of this would have happened.

Perhaps this is to do with the fact that it appeared to be a story with all the ingredients for a box-office hit (all the tragedies / highs / lows / character arcs etc), and whose main characters were in their 50s, and it would be a really good role for GA to get her teeth into. Rather than because of the inherent qualities of the book / writing.

I imagine there are not that many films coming out where the main characters are older (ie in my age bracket!) and the story focuses almost exclusively on them - and that sort of film would be really appealing to a female actor in their 50s. I suspect male actors in their 50s probably have more opportunities in film generally, unfortunately.

I have to also say, I’ve not read any of the books, not seen the film, but have followed these threads since quite early on, and have found them really engaging / involving… it’s a bit like being part of a giant book club - so thanks all for all the good work!

I have carried out my usual charity shop search and can report two copies of TSP have appeared this week.

This is a great review and really sums it all up. I think it also answers the question why people loved it so much. When Ray talks about losing her home you can tell she's telling the truth, ( that they lost their house not how) she's bereft and you can feel the pain and that draws people in. I also think people believe the rest because she's so "unflinchingly" honest in her distain for people.

I still think it was written by them both, the flowery parts have Moth written all over them.

Yes, maybe it's fairer to say that TSP attracted 'uncritical readers' as well as a body of non-readers. I think that's definitely borne out by some of the disappointed and betrayed responses. People who read more critically, write themselves, or are around writers, are well aware of the omissions, compromises, embellishments etc that go on in the process of writing and editing, even in non-fiction -- even if that isn't usually to the point of retrofitting a terminal diagnosis and providing a self-exonerating false backstory for a criminal act that directly led to homelessless. I don't for instance personally find the pseudonyms particularly noteworthy, and I'm not shocked by the idea that the walk may not have been completed as written, or by a certain amount of fiction in the non-fiction.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat -- I'd love to hear what you thought if you did read TSP. Entirely natural to be jealous of the success of something that is pretty humdrum, but just hit the right spot at the right time, even leaving aside the real story of the Walkers and their walks. Any writer friends I've talked to (a couple who've written memoir) have said similar.

What makes you think he is the one more capable of flowery prose? Compare how they describe their first meeting:
Raynor
I was 17* and in the busy sixth-form college canteen when I spotted a young man dipping a Mars bar into a cup of tea. I thought, “What a very strange thing to do,” and then he looked up and I saw his incredible blue eyes. As I left the room his gaze on me was one of those heart-stopping moments in life. I was besotted.
(*she normally says 18)
Moth
When I first laid eyes on Raynor, this bushy blonde-haired gem of a girl who was laughing with her friends in the college canteen, I thought, “Jeepers. That’s it. Love at first sight.” It’s a cliché but elementally that’s exactly what happened to me that day.

I don't think either is great literature but I find her description somewhat evocative while his is just absolutely cringe.
And a bit further down he describes her like this:
She lets nothing deter her and is the loving glue that keeps our family safe.

If any man ever described me as a 'bushy gem' or 'loving glue' I would consider that a reason for divorce.

https://archive.ph/qK8uj

Oh golly I'm not tech savvy..can anyone else try? It's a very long review posted 4th August.

A money-spinning fraud

Sorry, I was making a point about the reference to Tim removed but the reference is still there.

The working link is in the wonderful @FurryHappyKittens timeline above

Yes, I remember thinking that nothing would make me fall more rapidly out of love than being described as a 'bushy blonde-haired gem of a girl' who elicited the 'elemental' internal exclamation 'Jeepers. That's it. Love at first sight.'

I mean, in the cheese-o-meter it's pretty much at the same level as Tom, the dimwit posho in Four Weddings and a Funeral, meeting Cousin Deirdre whom he will go on to marry, being dumbstruck, punching the air and saying 'Thunderbolt City!'

It's just an observation. I obviously could be wrong about Moth being the more poetical of the two. There's definitely two different styles of writing.

In my role as Sceptical First Time Reader correspondent, I'm now reading Landlines. It opens in the familiar vein of 'Moth winces with pain and I wonder if it's time to do an even more implausible walk' but on the more specific implausible moments list we have RW claiming that 'it took me three attempts to pass O level Geography, mainly because I couldn't read OS maps' (p30). Who retakes geography, once let alone twice? That's a thing for English and maths as those are what employers insist on, surely? You'd have to have a lot of time on your hands. She could have just said she failed it but..

Place matting.

I imagine that's just as likely to be SW being all 'silly little old me -- I'm not a capable, free-striding Amazon, just a hapless, bumbling Everywoman.'

(I didn't go to the school in the UK -- is it even plausible that an inability to read OS maps would cause you to fail Geography at O level? I certainly taught myself to read them in a very basic way as an adult, without any particular difficulty. Unless you're on the kind of remote, pathless terrain that is pretty rare in a country like the UK, it's pretty straightforward to use very obvious things to orient yourself.)

Is there much about Hay Farm in Landlines?

Where is comment? Thanks.

I just wondered because the theory that Tim is/might be the more talented writer has been discussed before, and at the time it seemed to be mainly based on him being more charming and quick-witted and generally 'better with words' than Raynor in a video interview they both appeared in.
It wasn't clear to me if it was also based on some writing of his, that's why I asked.

Well he’s the prolific (?) note taker. Someone spotted a likely notebook in the reconstructed (?) orchard tent photo (& poss lighting equipment silver boxes etc) & we know he took notes re: guidebook. I agree at a measured, joint exercise to cash in on lock down zeitgeist to some degree.

Smoke and Mirrors would be a great alternative name for TSP