The world of books has been rocked this week by an investigation in The Observer which exposes best-selling author of The Salt Path, Raynor Winn, as a fraud.
Published seven years ago, the book, says The Observer, purports to tell “a heartbreaking “true” story of two people in their early 50s forced out of their rural home in Wales and weighed down by a sudden diagnosis of Moth’s [the author's husband] terminal illness.” Facing homelessness and despair through no fault of their own, the couple walked the South West Coast Path on a physical and spiritual journey that changed their life. Strangers offered hope and hospitality and, as a result of the 630-mile walk, the progress of Moth’s corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a relatively rare neurological condition, appeared to have stalled.
The book Winn wrote about their walk became a huge bestseller, popular with book groups, and at last count has sold more than 2 million copies, in 25 languages. Winn has published two sequels, with a contract to write one more. And last month the film made from the book, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, opened to positive reviews and is the third-ranking British made film this year.
All of this has been thrown into question by Chloe Hadjimatheou’s detailed investigation which uncovered Winn’s embezzlement of £64,000 from a man she worked for. Following a police investigation, the couple absconded and changed their names. The loss of their beloved farmhouse was not due to a bad investment by an old friend who let them down, but because they had borrowed £100,000 from a member of Moth’s family, and the loan was called in by his debtors. Only the sale of the home would settle it.
Most seriously, the trajectory of Moth’s illness has gone from unlikely to impossible. CBD patients are not known to have lived 12 years beyond diagnosis. Moth learnt of his illness 18 years ago, and nine neurologists were incredulous at this news.
Since Sunday’s publication in The Observer, on platforms like Mumsnet and Facebook, thousands of readers have been raging about these revelations. They feel duped into feeling sympathy for the couple’s woes. Some people are saying it always sounded improbable, but they didn’t want to question such a noble endeavour. The were rooting for this couple, and now they feel cheated and angry.
Many people love to read redemptive stories and memoirs. When it seems like the world is against the author yet, in spite of everything, they battle through, silence the naysayers, find supporters, and win. It can make us feel as if the world is a fairer, kinder place — and if good things can happen to them, then, maybe we will win too?
As Katie Glass wrote in The Times: “The book spoke right to my soul. I read it during lockdown as I sat on the Cornish coast, which I had run to during my own breakdown, having fled my relationship, my job and my flat in London in search of a challenge that I often felt defeated by. I sat on windswept clifftops and read about how the pair — a decade older than me — faced their heartache head on, marching from Minehead in Somerset to Poole harbour in Dorset. I gawped at their stoicism, navigating the English weather, and Devon and Cornwall’s windswept headlands along with the shame they felt at the circumstances they were in.“
"It put my own relatively cushy circumstances into perspective and inspired me to pick myself up and push on. It reminded me that we can forge our own destinies. I was so gripped that I recommended the book again and again to friends, who told me how uplifting they found it, and how they felt for the hard-done-by couple.”
Glass was devastated by the deceit, and wrote that many friends, “shared my disappointment — and anger. Partly at the idea that we might have been misled but also at the thought that the raw, simple and powerful message of a book — one that promotes the wonderful idea that resilience and a love of nature can overcome anything — may also really just be a fantasy.”
For people with serious health issues, the fantasy is tougher to bear, especially if they are repeatedly told the Salt Path story, and urged to “go on a really long walk”. For the past two years journalist Eleanor Bailey has been going through intensive treatment for the rare blood cancer myeloma, including a bone marrow transplant and multiple rounds of chemotherapy. A dedicated runner with a healthy lifestyle, her life has been shrunk to a slither of its former size, yet she is a hero to many (including me) for her steely insistence on keeping on, but, as she says “without the schmaltz”.
Of The Salt Path story she says “I think "people love to read redemptive stories and memoirs" if they have no experience of the circumstances - as it consoles them that love/walking/whatever can overcome all the terrible things that happen to other people. If they have experience, and their story is (naturally enough) nothing like as redemptive and uplifting as schmaltzy "memoir", then they mostly can't abide such tales.”
Some published psychotherapists, such as Stella Duffy, raised the fact that memoirs are not inherently the “truth”. On LinkedIn she wrote: "I am interested in the psychotherapeutic angle around this being a memoir and therefore 'honest', because of course the vast majority of us believe the veracity of our own story/memory, yet the personal is a very particular perspective, not necessarily 'truth'."
“Objectivity is impossible and everyone remakes their own story – some to make themselves a hero, some to make themselves a villain, some to shift beyond the situation in which they find themselves.”
In the same conversation another author and therapist Helen Kewell spoke for many when she wrote: “I cannot get my head around the levels of desperation, temerity and deception needed to carry this off. I, like many who were sucked in to the 'beauty' of the books, feel let down and duped. I don't doubt the journey they've been on in many other ways but to believe your own truth is one thing, to put it all out there to the world as truth is quite another.”
Winn’s lawyers, on behalf of the couple, told the press: “Today’s Observer article is highly misleading. We are taking legal advice and won’t be making any further comment at this time. The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey.”
