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!"

The eligibility criteria for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize make it crystal clear that if RW was the author of HNTDDD then TSP was not eligible for the prize.

RSL Christopher Bland Prize Award Eligibility and Entry Guidelines - Royal Society of Literature

I can only speak for my own experience, but I sent my first novel out to about six agents, two offered representation, and I went with one. (One of the six said no, two I never heard back from, and the final one asked to see a full MS after I’d already signed with the other agent.) I had no industry contacts or insider knowledge.

I don’t see any reason to think SW had contacts. TSP had an attention-grabbing hook. I can see why an agent would have thought it was saleable and signed SW.

I’d be interested to know whether she queried many agents, though (she gives the impression not, but it’s clear she wanted it to look as though the idea of publishing TSP never occurred to her until her daughter suggested it, so she’s unlikely to say anything that made her look ambitious or as if she was approaching agent finding like someone ambitious and professional).

And I’m interested in her claim that TSP needed very little editing after PRH bought it. (Which might be, of course, because JC had done a detailed structural and line edit with her before sending it out.)

(I’m in awe of our published authors by the way, @WellSurely and @Vroomfondleswaistcoat - anyone else? It’s a pipe dream of mine to actually finish my book let alone get it published! I hope I didn’t come across as suspecting that only the privileged could get published, but we’ve generally agreed about the quite poor writing in TSP so I did wonder about that particular instance.)

She should humbly and apologetically hand back the prize money and admit that she wasn’t worthy.

Even having a terrific agent won't guarantee you publication if your book doesn't suit what publishers are looking for. I know agented authors who struggle to get published. My first agent took me on, couldn't find me a publisher (apparently "noone was looking for romance novels"...) and dropped me and the agent I have now headhunted me when I'd already published two books without an agent (although this was nearly 20 years ago and things were a little different then). You absolutely don't need to be Somebody or to know All The Right People to get published.

And I firmly believe that the Christopher Bland prize should be taken away from SW, although without proof it would be very very hard. It was written under a different name and Sal can just claim it wasn't her until she's blue in the face. They could even pay someone else to pretend to be 'Izzy Winn-Thomas' and claim the book to prove it. Although I would LOVE to know what name was on the bank account the prize money was paid into....

Very good points. It does make me sick.

Paying someone to pretend to be Izzy Wyn Thomas does seem like it would be Sal’s style.

I think the clunky writing, combined with the flights into nature appreciation, is part of its appeal — that it gives the impression that here is an utterly ordinary person to whom an appalling double-whammy happened, and who did something unexpected. And you’re reading her artless, humble record of it.

That part of the point is that this ordinary, out of shape, middle-aged frump (as she keeps designating herself) suddenly finds herself homeless and walking, while carrying everything she owns, alongside her dying husband. And later writes it up as a supposed aide-memoire for him, with no writing experience or ambition. Artless, humble, self-deprecating, understandable anger and bitterness morphing into peace and miraculous cure etc etc.

Well that’s it, you’ve just nailed it @WellSurely … and she knew this. I’m still buying the Machiavellian schemer idea because she and the character on the page are too different. I don’t believe that all this happened by chance or luck, I do think she engineered it and knew how to play the part you’ve described so perfectly to win people over. When the mask slips though, there’s a stone wall beneath it that intuitive people pick up on.

Oh god, hear hear to this. My first two novels didn’t sell. That part was far harder.

And it can be tough even mid-career, and even if you’re very good. Someone comfortably established whom I know slightly through a friend, and who won a major prize last year, hadn’t been able sell her subsequent novel, the one she’d written immediately after the prize-winning one, for over a year.

My point was only that I got an agent without undue difficulty, so I don’t see it as particularly unlikely that SW was able to. I do see what JC saw.

An agent doesn't even have to think a book is objectively 'good' - they just have to think they can sell it, which is where I think SW scored, particularly if the book was written pretty much as published. She ticked off all the points that the readers the book was aimed at would love; homelessness (through no fault of your own, naturally), illness, nature, being misunderstood by 'the establishment' - all delivered with lots of nature observation along the way.

I get to read quite a few novels before they are published (so they've already been accepted for publication) and some of them amaze me at the twee, lack of any impactful conflict, 'but nothing matters because we live in a cute little village in a cute little cottage' nature of some of them.

Readers know what they want and will gobble up the most ridiculous nonsense if it hits the right spots. Which TSP did. The following books, written more out of desperation would likely never have been published but for the runaway success of TSP.

If we assume that SW wrote HNTDDD then it's quite a feat to transform yourself in the space of a few years from a hapless country lass who sold half a dozen copies of a book aimed at Welsh speaking small holders to an acclaimed multi million copy bestselling author adored by the publishing industry, the media and the reading public!

Readers know what they want and will gobble up the most ridiculous nonsense if it hits the right spots. Which TSP did. The following books, written more out of desperation would likely never have been published but for the runaway success of TSP.
I don’t agree. Possibly with fiction but not this. I agree that the whole premise of the book does indeed sound like ‘ridiculous nonsense’ but again it was the marketing of it as an honest, true story which drew in the curious and sympathetic reader. As a pp said, it’s the whole “madness” of it which can strike a chord. Raynor Winn seemed to despise mediocrity, pedestrian conformity, suburban contentment. She made it quite clear that she and Moth still had an energy and spark that made their marriage soar above everybody else’s. That is something that a lot of women will have admired but it also would have made them feel a certain sadness if she succeeded in making them feel lacking. It was actually these notions about marriage and relationships that I did not like and while reading the book I decidedly did not like Raynor Winn’s other snooty observations about people. I brushed it off. What I seemed to be investing in was putting myself in her place and really imagining what I would do in that situation. I believed it when she said there was too long a wait for a council house and I also sympathised with her sadness at losing their farm and what a dreadfully depressing experience it would be for them. The main point is that I believed and so I wanted to know how they managed. No, I certainly did not always like the woman on the page. I found her to be irritatingly self deprecating, judgemental with no reason but the ill prepared scattiness was something I believed was due to the terrible stress. On the page, Moth agreed with her ideas. If he hadn’t, I would have thought it terrible to force him onto that walk. It ignited him though and that’s all I needed to make it “ok” to myself.
😑😑😑
TSP’s marketing, the glossy magazine and online interviews were all I’d read, long before finding a secondhand copy a couple of years ago. I thought I was “late to the table” because she was a phenomenon by then. I admit that the gushing reviews by credible sources sealed my decision that the book was worth reading.

Agreed. I can see why JC and PRH thought it would sell. And the writing works on its own terms. If you compare it with the Parsons’ blog, for instance, which is a genuinely artless affair of ‘We went here and we did this. Had a fish supper, then packed up and went on to X’, written for friends and family to keep abreast of their travels, and to remind themselves of things they did. A book genuinely written to remind a man losing his memory of a long distance walk would probably look far more like that blog.

It has certainly hit the spot with many readers!

That’s really interesting, @NaughtyNoodler — one would have thought that the discovery that SW embezzled a lot of money, lied about why they lost their home, and that TW having got terminal diagnosis just before they started the walk isn’t true, would be terribly disheartening for this type of reader, the realisation that your idols had feet of rather murky clay. And that what you’d been ‘energised’ by was substantially a manipulative fiction.

But she seems to think ‘the controversy’ is a minor side issue, and that it would be ‘unkind’ to let it affect your reading of the entire oeuvre of SW.

😞 Agreed. “In spite of any controversy”, as though it’s only an alleged crime, unproven or an unfounded conspiracy theory. It’s very difficult for me to believe that this is real and not written by somebody else in the Walker camp who has benefitted from some sort of handout. If it’s not, then I am dismayed. There are so many wonderful books to be uplifted and energised by.

I never would have read these books or endorsed this author if I’d known the truth.

The lady appears to live in Norfolk and have no connection with the Walker camp and thus a genuine fan.

Oh, she sounds entirely genuine to me. It’s just interesting that she’s still rereading and strongly enjoying and recommending the books, despite being aware of the Observer story.

It’s clear she feels she really knows the Walkers (it’s ’so unlike’ SW to go on a solo walk, she ‘loves them loads’!), so I would have said that a reader like that might well feel as betrayed as if someone they considered a close friend turned out to have a criminal past they’d lied about to garner sympathy, and had been pretending her husband was close to death.

• they visited the neurologist in June 2015 and didn't mention that they had walked the Minehead-LE section in 2013 and possibly other sections of SWCP in 2014. Could this suggest that this crucial omission contributed to the diagnosis of mild atypical CBS because the neurologist might have been less inclined to make that tentative diagnosis if he had known the full extent of their walking activities in 2013 and possibly 2014? ( CBD and the SWCP are not natural bedfellows!)

Possibly the visit to the neurologist was linked to an attempt to get invalidity benefits since I suspect in June 2015 the TSP revenues wouldn’t have yet appeared. I also find it interesting that there are a number of similarities between the consultants note of the 2015 meeting with the supposed 2013 account given in the TSP - condition first noticed 6 years before, TW out of work etc.

I agree @DreamyHiker for whatever reason, there was no mention of any walking to the consultant, not even holiday walking. If they walked substantially in either 2013 or 2014, they decided it was not worth mentioning, or they thought it would not help in the portrayal of Tim's condition to the neurologist. They might well have been hoping for a diagnosis that would lead to benefits, if Tim was unable to work.

The £48pw working tax credits that they allegedly received from the first week of their walk (8 Aug 2013?) has never made much sense to me.

I'm no expert on benefits but any working tax benefit would be based on the last financial year (6 Apr 2012 - 5 Apr 2013). From Apr 2013 - July 2013 (the date they were evicted from Pen-y-maes), they were still getting income from holiday lets. So how on earth would they suddenly have been receiving working tax credits a matter of weeks later when the loss of their house was in doubt until the very last minute? Something doesn't add up.

I guess that they could have been on such a low income that they were eligible for working tax credit payments while they still ran the holiday lets. But as soon as this finished and they lost their home they would no longer have been eligible for working tax benefits. So if the account in TSP is true, they were committing benefit fraud.

I understood it as a payment they’d been receiving for some time, based on two non-working adults living off the barn income, not a new one:

… we did get forty-eight pounds a week in tax credits, as Moth had become increasingly unable to work, our income had dropped down only to the barn rental, which made us eligible for a weekly payment from the government.

Obviously this raises questions about why TW, too unwell to work as a plasterer or gardener, didn’t do the court case gruntwork (which SW says took up so much of her time that she couldn’t hold down a job at the same time), while the able-bodied SW worked. But obviously that would then raise questions as to SW’s past work history, and why SW might have been unable to get a job anywhere local if she was known to have stolen from the Hemmingses.

Far easier to say Moth was too ill to work and SW, having spent decades ‘farming’ their one-acre holding, had no recent jobs at all, and was too busy with the court case.

That makes sense but if Moth had become unable to work wouldn't he have been getting some form of disability allowance?