And so when, on Sunday, it was alleged in the Observer that Raynor Winn, author of the beloved, inspirational 2018 memoir The Salt Path – which has sold more than two million copies worldwide and was recently turned into a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs – had in fact seemingly spun parts of the story from a tissue of obfuscation and lies, I reached for my phone in defeat.
Her response, which ran to several messages, most of them gloating, essentially read: “Told you!!!”
When I read a book, a work of memoir, I believe it. I trust in the words on the page. Yes, I know that it is human nature to exaggerate, and to colour in, and I know too that memoir requires a riveting and sustaining narrative. But I don’t expect blatant deception, or wild embellishment. I go to fiction for that.
Yet the Observer piece alleges that The Salt Path’s claims of Winn’s homelessness and bankruptcy at the hands of some merciless (former) friends is not only untrue, but also that their plight was self-inflicted.
Winn, for her part, has responded by saying that the Observer piece is “highly misleading”.
The sheer chutzpah on display here is almost fantastic. What sort of mindset must one possess to maintain the charade? Did they never think that the truth might eventually come out?
square WALKING I walked Cornwall's coast and met hikers inspired by The Salt Path
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I read The Salt Path back in 2020, and found it inspirational. I was won over by Winn’s sheer determination in the face of such adversity. When I interviewed her for this paper a year later, on the publication of her second book, I congratulated her success.
Winn isn’t of course the first writer to fail to understand the unwritten rules of the genre. Back in 2003, American author James Frey published A Million Little Pieces, which catalogued his descent into drug addiction and the hard-won climb back to sobriety. Oprah Winfrey loved it, it sold millions – and was then revealed to be filled with untruths, a novel in all but name.
This is not, as has since been confirmed by neurologists, the kind of disease whose symptoms can be lessened simply by purchasing a pair of sturdy walking boots from Millets.
“I met a couple yesterday who told me how my books have made them re-evaluate the way they approached their own lives. They talked to me as if we were friends.” They might not feel like friends anymore.
As it stands, Winn has a fourth instalment of her walking adventures due for publication in the autumn. It can’t possibly come out now though, surely? If it does, a suggestion: file it not in the memoir section, but in fantasy.
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