Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, about trekking across South West England with her husband Moth in the wake of losing their home and his diagnosis with a fatal illness, was a success when it was first published in 2018 – but that initial fame has been far outstripped in recent weeks.
Following a report in The Observer last month, questioning many of the memoir’s foundational claims, the public has been hooked on a story that’s just getting motoring – and proving to be far more interesting than the book itself could ever have dreamed of.
In a statement, Winn says: “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.”
But the scandal’s latest instalment comes courtesy of Joanna Cocking, the owner of a Cornish café that the book seems to reference. While “[Winn] never named the café […] there is only one café in this cove,” notes Cocking – as such, she must have been taken aback to read her apparent analogue in The Salt Path, who harangues a young employee as he serves paninis and sweeps floors: “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? There’s two tables out there uncleared. What do I pay you for? You’re fucking lazy.”
Charming! Trouble is, according to Cocking, the café has been carpeted for years and never served paninis. But why let a few details get in the way of a good story?
The more I read about Winn, the more of a nightmare she sounds – but it’s not hard to imagine why she might have thought that being liberal with the truth in a memoir, rather than just writing a novel where she could invent as much as she pleased, would make her book a hit. After all, the only thing the public loves more than a good story is one that’s true – or at least seems that way.
Reality television; social media – we know deep-down that much of the grist to our entertainment mill is highly mediated, yet a veneer of authenticity means we’re happy to suspend disbelief, even when something is (whisper it) not very good. Somehow, the semblance of having actually happened makes up for a multitude of narrative sins – don’t shoot the messenger, that’s just the way we’re built.
As such, if Winn did embroider her experience to make it more compelling, she’d be far from the first – but for an audience expecting the truth, artistic license is a fine line, and it can backfire.
My eyes glaze over when I read The Salt Path’s performatively inspirational synopsis; overcoming adversity, spiritual journey, give me a break. The Observer’s investigation, on the other hand, alleging that the real reason the couple lost their house was that Winn defrauded her employer in 2008 while casting doubt on Moth’s diagnosis, lights up my brain like a Christmas tree.
square YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN From ‘The Salt Path’ to my fake columns, we can't recognise truth anymore
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We swallowed Winn’s account back in 2018, when that was all that was on offer – but since a Bigger, Truer story entered the chat, her original narrative is done for. What once was a tale about a plucky couple on a long walk is now one about a woman (allegedly!) fudging everything from the reasons they set off to the café staff they met along the way – I know which one I’d rather read, and, judging by the public’s feverish appetite for fresh developments in The Salt Path saga, I’m far from alone.
While that might sound like bad news for the author, don’t forget that all publicity is good publicity. King Midas himself couldn’t have paid for the awareness generated over recent weeks by the investigation challenging Winn’s account, and, if she doesn’t sell copious copies as a result, I’ll eat my walking boots. Meanwhile, I can imagine the poor café getting some extra traffic too, if only to check on their carpet/sandwich offering.
Real life rarely unfolds according to the neat, satisfying narrative beats that fiction can offer – but get caught out trying to pass the latter off as the former, and you risk becoming the story rather than writing it.
No doubt, there is something extraordinarily satisfying about a memoir being bested by its own exposée. In her book, Winn banked on our appetite for true tales enough to (allegedly!) fake some; in the delirious reaction to her downfall, she got more than she bargained for.
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