Thread 15: 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 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

4 more from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...

The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)

(Live/online event)

The Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

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?^

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

Thread 12: 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?

Thread 13: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 14: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5388981-thread-14-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 get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently a number of 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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. 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 fourteen 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.

#Pinchofsaltpath
#Fudge
#Cider
#OurChloe
#OurSimon
#Correspondents
#Salray
#Timmoth
#MistakesWereMade
#EmbellishedBollox
#JustBollox
#DriveByScolding
#Glumwashing
#ThereBeSharks
#Scones
#NakedHikers
#TurquoiseGString
#BudleighSalterton
#SallyForth
#YesItReallyIsThread15
#Rabbits

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

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat

That's possible though good journalists should always be on the look out for the truth and a scoop. The doubts seem to have come from the public before the Observer's revelations. There's a review from 2020 of The Wild Silence in The Guardian and one of the comments says RW may be an 'Unreliable Narrator ' but although another poster asks them about this there isn't a reply.

I think they'll do an interview with a friendly journalist in the style of the Oprah/Harry/Meghan offering ....either that or a documentary focusing on Moths health with no mention of the embezzlement or twisted timelines.

The controversy may not have impacted book sales to a degree that will see SW genuinely suffer financially but I don't think she'll be able to resist biting back...her MO is to appear the victim and she may feel an urge to flip any situation that portrays her as anything but.

They should have been digging deeper, there's no doubt. But on the surface this was just a 'nice little story' that sold well and there didn't seem much to investigate other than the timeline being a bit odd and the unnatural survival of Moth. I don't think, until the big revelation of the embezzlement and then the uncovering of more and more 'personal truths' that there would be more of a story than a medical marvel one. If Moth had claimed recovery from a more common condition, RA, say, then there might have been more coverage. But CBD was such an obscure condition that everything was taken at face value, I assume. Not enough public interest to pay anyone to dig around.

Although she claims to be shy she has done an inordinate number of interviews and attended numerous book festivals over the last 7 years that I wonder if she hasn't become somewhat addicted to being a literary super star.

I think they'll do an interview with a friendly journalist in the style of the Oprah/Harry/Meghan offering ....either that or a documentary focusing on Moths health with no mention of the embezzlement or twisted timelines.

The reason why I don’t think they’ll do a big confessional interview is because I don’t know what they’ll be happy to say in it that they haven’t already. I really doubt they will come clean and be honest about their situation.

I think it’s more likely that Chloe H will do a documentary for Disney+/Netflix/Amazon a few years down the line, similar to the Scamanda and Sweet Bobby documentaries that were both inspired by podcasts (the SB documentary was actually based on a podcast series from Tortoise Media, who released the TSP podcast and of course also own the Observer).

I also don't think there will be a big confession or any apology. I don't think SW can backtrack on the line she's held for so long - it would mean having to say that so MUCH was a lie. If it had been only one thing, say the means by which the house was lost, then perhaps it could have been the basis of a confession. But there's just so many things coming out of the woodwork that it means that virtually the entire storyline of three books (and counting) is called into question and I'm not sure that SW would want, or be able, to explain away everything.

In the immortal words of the great Columbo, there would always be 'just one more thing...'

I really hope Chloe turns her research into a book, if not one of the resident genius’s on this thread needs to do it.
Apart from Chloe every professional reviewer in the media swallowed the whole story and nobody ever questioned the implausible story. Most news websites and newspapers are just pure PR.

I think SW is someone who cares deeply what people think about her...the snide comments about people she met on the path smack of insecurity ...I think it's rare to get to her age and still be so bristly (is that a word) like that. If she can't repair her image through doing an interview or documentary what will she do? I can't see her hiding inside forever, perhaps they'll move abroad.

I write mostly about religious ethics (in a history-of-ideas kind of way, being a bit vague - ETA, because I'm in a tiny field and prefer not to be identifiable), which means anything can be relevant, including cricket and The Odyssey, but also this whole controversy... am in fact planning to use the TSP controversy as an example when I teach a course on "truth & lies," interested to see what students will think of it further down the line...

What depresses me about all this is that it's spoilt memoir for me. Sure, sometimes I've been a bit sceptical when reading a memoir, but generally I have been able to read in good faith and that's kind of the point for me - that it's memoir not fiction.

But I'm wondering now if the whole genre is tainted - I fear it is for me.

It's so depressing that publishers pay so much less attention to the inherent quality of their product and focus so much on the profitability to the exclusion of spending time and resource checking and improving the product.

As a journalist I have found the same really. All sorts of content seems.a bit degraded - it's never mind the quality feel the sheer ch urn of articles

As a writer I really appreciate a good editor. I have worked with some excellent who have really improved my work so we can both feel very proud of the finished article, but so many just glance over it and that's it. It's all of a piece with fake news I suppose. It just makes me sad really that readers - and listeners - are not expecting and getting more 🙁.

@mauvishagain I have had another quick Google, this time, what should a uk consultant do if a patient is exploiting a diagnosis. It sets out a clear path, ultimately saying that it should be reported to their seniors, the care commission or if necessary the police, if not they can be reported to the general medical council.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat

I can see how the illness would make journalists and interviewers back off but the story of how the home was lost is ludicrous. How can investing in someone else's business lead to the investor losing their home? The only one who might lose their home is the business owner but, even then, not necessarily. Why would a judge refuse to accept a document that proved the WalkerWinns weren't liable for the debt? And there would be council accommodation in the first instance and a good chance of a permanent council flat later.

I like to think of journalism as an honourable profession and dedicated to bringing us the facts but maybe the majority are only interested in easy stuff and celebrities.

Further to my post above, I guess the internet ha vastly increed the volume of competing "content" out there so noone can afford the investment in any one item....

@candycane222

I agree - reading non-fiction is never going to be the same for some of us.

I think SW might have employed that well known element 'Handwavium'. If you can't get a straight answer - particularly if you're only questioning as part of a soft, public interest story rather than an in depth interview, you're going to move straight on to something you can actually write up. I have no great love for journalists, but I have been on the sharp end of a lot of interviews, and the journalists aren't generally very interested when you just write books. They want to ask where you got your inspiration from and a few cute details that they can use, but they aren't interested in the nitty-gritty. I'd guess that if someone raised the ridiculousness of the 'homelessness' story, SW will have muttered a load of gibberish about being too trusting, and moved swiftly on to another subject about which she could pontificate.

So unless someone was specifically investigating the story of the house loss, they wouldn't bother to go back to it. And until Our Chloe broke the whole story, most people have been waving it through, haven't they?

Agree azure though in defence of us writers it tends to be our commissing editors and then their proprietors above them who drive this cheapening. Because I still take the same care over what I write, my relative earning have long been in decline. That's my choice and luckily for me it's one I can afford to make, but it's sad for most of my younger colleagues I think

@Tryingtoeatcake Even so, it was a member of the public who contacted Chloe Hadjimatheou and tipped her off. Without that anonymous person, the real story might have taken much longer to come out or never at all.

A reviewer is essentially giving potential readers a flavour of the book, though, and recommending whether they should devote several hours to read it when they could have been reading Beowulf/listening to the cricket/communing either nature. They’re not investigative journalists.

Just like the reviewers of The Outrun won’t have been trying to find people who did rehab with Amy Liptrott to see whether her dates check out, or whether she fell off the wagon numerous times before she headed to Orkney, rather than the cleaner once she represents in the memoir. It’s not that they weren’t doing their job, they were just doing a different job.

I’m not sure seeing it as a ‘homelessness memoir’ is entirely misguided, either, even if we accept they could have gone into council emergency accommodation or slept on friends’ or relatives’ floors or sofas. There is a lot of so-called ‘hidden homelessness’, which doesn’t just mean rough sleepers, but covers people who often don’t show up on official statistics because they’re invisibly sofasurfing longterm or in insecure temporary accommodation etc. If they’d taken the option of emergency council accommodation or stayed camping in Tim’s brother’s garden or on Jan’s floor, or camped on their French land, they’d still have been ‘hidden homeless’.

And I’m not sure either that the Walkers losing their home because of SW’s embezzlement entirely invalidates seeing it as in some sense a book about homelessness. Some people who become homeless do so because of criminality, poor financial decisions etc. And not a tiny number of people are a mortgage payment or two away from sofa surfing.

How very interesting, would love to know more - but respect your anonymity.

Keep on doing a Kierkegaard!

I don't know why they don't rebuild the cottage in France and move over there. Maybe that's what the ultimate plan is - they don't want to do it yet, because they're too findable there. But give it a year for the fuss to die down and stop being marketable, and that is what I would do if I were them.

@candycane222

I'm sure you're a good writer: maybe it's the public as well, wanting easy stuff to read. Some interviewers seem to fawn over the interviewee and don't ask the obvious questions, especially with politicians.

These were my feelings, too, when the Observer story broke. My DW can't understand what all the fuss is about, but she wasn't brought up in Minehead, as I was. It was admittedly a long time ago (? the good old days!) when public transport was king. Most families didn't own a car but we took the bus to Porlock/walked to Porlock Weir/Culbone church. Service bus to Lynmouth/cliff railway to Lynton. Then of course there were the excursions by coach to Woolacombe etc. and when father bought a car, that allowed us to travel much further afield - Clovelly, Combe Martin, Barnstaple and as a teenager, a holiday in Padstow with a trip from there to Lands End. So pretty much visiting parts of the first leg of the SWCP as set out in the book. Except that when we saw the film I started to have my doubts about the claims made in the book and which a matter of weeks later were proved justified by Chloe H in the Observer.

It would have been more enlightening about homelessness IMO though, if we'd heard the full story including the criminality. For me the lies about the original home loss and apparently also about the sequence of events thereafter value the whole thing to absolute zero.

@SunlitUpland I wasn't challenging the description as a homelessness memoir, just interested as it's usually a 'redemptive' or 'nature or travel' book or a love story. As for the homelessness, it was intentional in their case and they had at least one choice. I was homeless a long time ago and, later, got served with the first stage of the eviction process. It takes a long time and there are opportunities to find somewhere else. It is mostly young, childless people who become homeless, particularly those who don't have family and/or been in the care system. Moth's illness would have given him a lot of points for council or housing association housing.

I also think too much time has elapsed now. If when the whole story broke SW had come out and confessed everything, done the full mea culpa and breast beating, reputations could have been saved. A few more 'mistakes were made', full confession over the homelessness debacle and openness about the embezzlement (I'm pretty sure Sal could have swung it for some sympathy, made the money 'essential' for the family...) and made the CBD diagnosis the result of catastrophisation and misunderstanding - people might have swallowed it. The fuss would have died down and they might have got away with it. It's the relentless holding the line that they weren't to blame in any way that is getting people's backs up. We all know that anyone can become homeless at almost any time, we are all only a few unpaid bills away from total panic, but honesty really is the best policy.