Thread 19: 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 ...

First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5422393-thread-18-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 are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items 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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. Please do not engage with drive-by scolders 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. Over four months we have done amazingly well together for 18 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.

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

"I'll fight anyone who says I'll make it to Christmas 2021!"

You put it perfectly. Yes and it also saddens me that their books share shelf space with reputable authors who can get overlooked or worse - mistrusted, especially if they are of a similar genre.
I’m sorry @Peladon , you’re right. Thank you for pointing that out.
I remember reading that post @BecalmedBrandy and agree it fits the definition of Sal perfectly.
I understand from everything that @Vroomfondleswaistcoat has said about publishing that PRH won’t be dropping this next book, but are there ever circumstances when they have no choice?

Beyond OWH and a mea culpa (if she's got that in her), I think SW is a busted flush. The success of TSP was based on 3 premises imo: Raymoth's homelessness, Moth's life limiting CBD diagnosis and the concept that they walked the entire SWCP over 18 months, defying social prejudice and the elements. I think CH's revelations have exposed all three premises as complete bunkum.

So what is left? Nature writing, pontification on ecological issues, global warming, homelessness, CBD, the right to roam etc etc - all issues on which SW has no particularly original perspectives or solutions to offer.

TSP established the Raymoth brand. But I think the brand is now in tatters and though it might shift a respectable number of copies of OWH, beyond that I don't see much of a future for her. She's walked the bulk of the UK LDPs and the Lazarus like recoveries of Moth and his CBD have surely run their literary course. I just don't see SW reinventing herself as the next Robert Macfarlane, however much she would love to. With the best will in the world, the Pencarrow Head peregrine just doesn't cut the mustard in the pantheon of great nature writing.

Maybe it's time to dust off 'Three Mountains and a Ceilidh' and return to what SW does best - the world of fantasy and fiction!

An admittedly not very scientific survey (ie a random FB search!) suggests that in one small area of the UK (Boddington, Northamptonshire), cinema goers are not exactly queuing up to see The Salt Path. Admittedly Boddington is a long way from the coast, and I haven't got a clue whether CH's revelations have impacted the film's appeal.

It does happen that a book is not published by a publisher who has agreed to publish it. Bloomsbury didn’t publish Nigel Biggar’s book on the ethics of colonialism after it had commissioned it, and it ended up being published by Harper Collins in the end. From what I remember, Bloomsbury said it wanted to delay publication as public opinion wasn’t favourable to a book offering a partial defence of colonialism in the wake of Black Lives Matter, and would review in a year, while NB wanted it to be published asap. He eventually accepted a payoff (of the parts of the advance he hadn’t yet been paid), the rights reverted back to him, and he took it to HC.

It’s not that they ‘had no choice’, though. They used their get out clause, PRH presumably has similar. It’s fairly standard. But a different situation, obviously.

Sal, it seems to me, views herself as the victim of misfortune. I've got to admit I struggle to square her jaundiced view of the world with reality.

After all she has:

• benefitted from a £100k loan from a distant relative which has possibly kept her out of jail
• had a large number of friends and family members who have at various times offered her and Moth accommodation
• been lucky enough to secure a book deal and the backing of the UK's most prestigious publishing house which has helped her become a multi millionaire bestselling author
• has had the great good fortune to mix with the great and the good of the UK literary world, been feted at innumerable literary festivals and been acclaimed as a nature and travel writer 'sans pareil ' by the UK's adoring and uncritical media
• she was the beneficiary of the largesse of the UK's generous welfare and educational system in the form of weekly tax credits and a student loan for Moth to complete a 3 year degree as a mature student
• lives close to her two children
• is able to afford the luxury of living in a secluded and peaceful 6 bedroom farmhouse with a swimming pool and access to a private beach located in a beautiful part of the UK
• has had the financial resources to spend considerable time completing some of the UK's most iconic long distance paths including walking pretty much from John O'Groats to Land's End.
• has a husband in his mid 60s who has stuck by her through thick and thin
• appears to enjoy reasonably good health to the degree that she is able to complete long distance footpaths in the midst of winter.

Maybe Sal needs a reality check. If she really wants to understand victims of misfortune maybe she should go off and spend a few months somewhere challenging like South Sudan and realise that her "misfortunes" are, in the greater scheme of things, pretty insignificant.

Well, agreed, absolutely. (Though there would be at least some attempt to depict TW as bravely improving the South Sudanese GDP via poetry and shaking hands with people.)

My point is only that she’s worked hard in all three books to position them as underdog/victims, including in LL where, by any stretch of the imagination, they were two rich people with the money and leisure to take a four-month holiday (which means she has to create renewed jeopardy about TW’s health, ill-fitting boots, freaking out on waterfalls, Scottish cafes refusing to serve them inside etc).

I think it’s possible she might at some level revel in the opportunity to depict them as the blameless victims of a smear campaign in a revised OWH. Think of the material!

For me, this has all ready reached its culmination in the revealing 'rebuttal'.

One concession by The Observer, the pigeonniere, and all the rest true. Many different ordinary commentators, youtube videos, etc, thought this straightaway.

SalRay has proved it all.

Hmm. Don't see Raymoth moving any time soon!

Great comments above. I don't think Salray has the sort of personality that would ever count blessings, even when her circumstances are now frankly luxurious and enviable by almost any standards, for hers is the mantel of perpetual victimhood.

There seems also zero capacity for recognising that at least their past financial straits were created by themselves. Plenty of people lose their homes because of unemployment and health issues that are beyond their control, not (eg) the unwise purchase of French pigeonnieres and defrauding their employers.

I was thinking about OWH and i wonder if Sal might go sideways with it. Take out ALL references to Moth, their previous difficulties, pretty much anything that referred to the previous books, and instead lean heavily into the 'nature writing'. Very much in the 'la la, trees and flowers, how healing nature is (when you've been subjected to the attacks of Mean Girls and your MH is in the dustbin), tra la. Bit of trudging, grey weather, peregrine falcons overhead....' etc etc. She might even try to go down the 'poetic and lyrical nature descriptions' route.

This would serve several purposes - distract everyone from the whole 'Moth was/is ill' scenario by not mentioning it; launch her 'new career' as a nature writer; get the book out without tarnishing it with any mention of the previous books.

She might be positioning herself to write a whole series about nature. I'm not actually sure that PRH would go for this, because Sal isn't exactly the most gifted writer in existence and her nature commentaries are very much either lifted from other books or bland and obvious observations. But there is a market for this kind of 'housewife discovers whole new passion whilst staring at trees' stuff and I very much fear she could be heading this way.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat But there is a market for this kind of 'housewife discovers whole new passion whilst staring at trees' stuff and I very much fear she could be heading this way.

Interesting - because her more recent interviews showed she was firmly set on that route. However, I concluded:

Agree it is all about the money for those who have already made a considerable amount. For readers surely there is now a considerable gap in how they were marketed and the reality?
She was going more towards the spiritual, oneness with nature, wellness. Whereas in reality she is a proven con artist and thief?

I don't see who would buy into the "I am the wind" and all the purity when she is unrepentant for milking the goodwill of very nice employers, sufferers, carers, etc.

I would guess that the market would be all those commenters quoted above who don't care about the whole TSP controversy, new readers who've never heard of Sal/Ray but are looking for 'easy' nature books and the die hard fans. After all, if she wants to branch out into writing nature books, she can change her name. Raynor Winn was a pen name, Izzy Winn-Thomas was a pen name, she can easily pick another name. If a publisher thinks her writing is good enough, they will go for it. And, after all, she doesn't need the money now, so she could even go with a very small publisher, just to continue being a 'published author'.

I agree with you, though, that the writing isn't anything special. Sometimes, when I've dipped into TSP, I've gone along with it for a while but there is always something jarring.

I find it too repetitive - gorse, oystercatchers, cliche-ridden. To me there is that me, me, me nature writing that does not transport my soul but leaves me stuck in the mud with her navel-gazing. Always so prosaic.

You could be right. Though I do wonder how a 2 week walk staying at b&bs in winter and missing a couple of chunks due to flooding/bad weather while suffering a chest infection could ever provide enough material for that iteration of OWH.

I feel so saddened that her writing has had this effect on you @BecalmedBrandy

I find it too repetitive - gorse, oystercatchers, cliche-ridden. To me there is that me, me, me nature writing that does not transport my soul but leaves me stuck in the mud with her navel-gazing. Always so prosaic.

Im not a poet but I am a painter. I spend as much time as I can outdoors in all weathers, just because it brings me tremendous joy to watch wading birds on the mud flats and occasionally I’ll spot one on the reefs. I find turnstones delightful and can watch and just be fully absorbed by their activity at the tideline. As for gorse… it’s the colours of it all against the blues, greens and greys which I can’t get enough of. I don’t expect everyone to feel the same way but I’m sad that Walker’s writing has bludgeoned people over the head.

I hope she never launches herself as a nature writer or any other writer under another name. It is bad enough that I was drawn into the original trilogy by way of rave reviews, it makes me feel sick that I could be persuaded once again in the same manner and not know who the author really is. That would be so wrong. People have a right to know what they are buying into and who from and make their choices accordingly.

OWH is being described as a solitary walk in which she deals with her “tangled” emotions etc etc. It has to be about Moth and the emotions were written once again to manipulate the reader. She ought to have felt awkward and out of place at these literary events, rubbing shoulders with other authors, knowing that her success was a result of her fudging the truth and crying ‘Wolf!” but somehow the smug look on her face always shows the opposite, that she feels deserving of the attention and praise.
I keep referring back to the rebuttal because some recent posts over the last couple of days have made me think more about it. The way she angrily, bitterly seems to thrust the nhs doctors notes at us, to shut us up.
This is deeply personal information that no-one should ever be forced to share. The redacted sections are for the personal privacy of Moth and the doctors involved.
Why is it “deeply personal” and “no-one should ever be forced to share”? Isn’t this what her writing was all about? Actually, I am surprised that these letters were not published in the pages of the books themselves as records. I can think of other memoirs where authors have published photographic elements of the life they are writing about. Ha, of course Sally Walker doesn’t do that because her account in the book isn’t the truth and these letters would alter the impression she wanted to make. There’s only one reason why she is so angrily sharing these letters and it has nothing to do with the “deeply personal” aspect.

Maybe this is the padding around the walk for OWH.
Edit: the screenshot isn't coming through!!!

Basically Laurie Hertzel said on Facebook: "I believe she's working on a fourth memoir, this one about rebuilding the farm in Wales back when they were young marrieds."

@HatStickBoots Im not a poet but I am a painter. I spend as much time as I can outdoors in all weathers, just because it brings me tremendous joy to watch wading birds on the mud flats and occasionally I’ll spot one on the reefs.

It is often more uplifting to read one of our older novels. A relative sent me this because they thought I'd like it:

(Jamaica Inn)

A solitary curlew stood pensively beside the stream, watching his reflection in the water; and then his long beak darted with incredible swiftness into the reeds, stabbing at the soft mud, and, turning his head, he tucked his legs under him and rose into the air, calling his plaintive note, and streaking for the south.

I do!

I'm really curious to know how she turned a two week walk into a book, even if that stuff was padding. It just doesn't strike me as either compelling or enough of anything to merit an entire book, a chapter perhaps or a magazine article. No doubt she spun something together.

I am sure @HatStickBoots is correct in supposing that the theme of OWH is again Moth's health and ruminations that manipulate the readers emotions, focusing on how noble they were when young. Salray is a confidence trickster, she is akin to the people who take advantage of people romantically, leaving the victims hurt and often embarrassed. I really admire the people who have spoken out, who really cared about these two, because this story was supposed to be true, Salray was not a celebrity or well known person who you might expect to make little tweaks, especially in relation to other people when writing a memoir.

Salray was supposed to be an ordinary honest woman, telling her true story with no need to lie. I think the thing that Salray wanted, the attention and adoration has gone, that is never coming back. No more will she be performing on the stage with Gigspanner or be introduced as beloved author Raynor Winn. All of that has gone, all the lovely people who opened their hearts to her and Tim will hopefully feel better, no one should feel embarrassed by being conned, we rely on people telling us the truth and this woman's truth was supposed to have been checked before being marketed to the reading public.

I wonder who that is and the source of the information. If it’s true, then she would have happily continued to spin the yarn of the cruelty of having all that snatched away… Damn. The reader knows the truth now. How can I talk about this in a way that they would care again? She might be thinking.

Thank you, that is perfect. Spot the difference! I did enjoy Jamaica Inn.

Feels like another con trick.

You buy a book that purports to be about the C2C walk (which they'd always planned to do together before fate once more reared its (her?) ugly head....) and 95% of it turns out to be about escape to the country on the Llyn peninsula 30+ years ago.

Sal had a small window of opportunity to pen a new walk themed book before the publicity for the Salt Path film kicked off followed by Gigspanner tour dates and the round of promotional appearances at sundry Litfests, OWH being the product.

Guess that's the way the publishing industry works.Hardened Raymoth fans will probably lap it up, whatever its literary merits. Wonder whether D&J make another cameo appearance.

I think LH is the American journalist (can’t remember the paper) someone linked a TSP review from, in which she referred to TW as ‘Moth Walker’ long before CH made their real names known. This was a few threads ago.

Yes that's right. I found these Maine librarians who really cared about what happened to Moth, they quoted Laurie. I shared it and then someone else found her on Facebook:

Laurie Hertzel: "And regarding their names: When I reviewed "The Salt Path" for the Star Tribune, I wrote to the publisher and asked what Moth's last name was and they told me then that it was Walker. It was clear from the book that Winn was Raynor's maiden name."

Oh yes, I remember now. Thank you both of you. Everyone who read the book was invested in Moth’s health. So Laurie Hertzel had some background information about the content. So, The Relationship. The years that followed the moment with Mars bar in the canteen. She may keep this intact because she loves telling everyone that their relationship is a rare love story that she seems to think other women will envy her for but without malice. As everything else is untrue, I think this probably is as well.