• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

News Oh Dear… This Doesn’t Look Good…

Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.

AgentPete

Capo Famiglia
Guardian
Full Member
Joined
May 19, 2014
Location
London UK
LitBits
0
United-Nations
Her steely account of homelessness and hope in the face of adversity captivated more than two million readers worldwide and was adapted into a film released this year starring A-listers Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
But it has now been claimed that Raynor Winn's account of losing her home before embarking on a mammoth trek of the South West Coast Path in her best-selling 2018 memoir, The Salt Path, may not be as 'unflinchingly honest' as initially billed - after allegations published today said she omitted key elements of her story.
This kind of thing has… happened surprisingly frequently in publishing. "Due diligence", guys!
And rather than being forced out of their home in rural Wales when an investment in a childhood friend's business went awry, as the book suggested, it is alleged that the property was repossessed after Winn stole tens of thousands of pounds from a former employer and was arrested.

 
Wowsa. I'd better rewrite my query letter pretty fast.

Whether what this article says is true or not, I was never a fan. I just accepted that this book was popular for reasons I didn't get.

To be honest, I disliked her intensely after listening to her read the audiobook.
Her voice had a self-pitying slant that got on my last nerve.

But I assumed that reading it in hard copy was a different experience. And that, had I done so, I, too, would have felt the message of uplifting bravery that everyone else seemed to get from it.

The thing is, having been in a similar situation, I found her solutions to be weird. And selfish. And based on erroneous information about what kind of help was or wasn't available to them.

And her response to staying with friends while they sorted themselves out, for instance, seemed over-privileged and didn't hold water. Just because you don't feel comfortable doing it doesn't mean you "have no choice" but to do something else.
Yet she painted herself as the victim of the situation every single time.

And I think they made stupid choices, not brave ones.

If they really wanted a walking challenge, they could have done the Camino in Spain. The food would have been a quarter of the price, and the weather would have been kind to them (and especially to a sick husband) as they went into autumn and winter.
But no, they stayed in Britain, where it would rain A LOT. And food and camping costs a bloody fortune.

Plus, they'd blow £15 of their precious £42 a week living expenses on beer and chips. Fine. Do that. I mean, I've been in that situation and made different choices, but you do you. But then don't moan about having no money for food, and how terrible it is that you have nothing to eat. Start a JustGiving page or something.

Honestly, I could go on. But to hear they might have owned a holiday home in France all this time?

That can't be true, can it?

The bank would have taken that too, as one of their assets. And let's be fair, The Daily Mail isn't that into fact-checking either.
 
How do people imagine that if they put their story Out There, those who know it's not the 100% truth are going to keep quiet? All of them? For ever? When the back story is as grimy as that?

I believe I saw that Raynor Winn has a second book coming out...
 
The agent needs to carry a bit of the can for this (as I said above, due diligence…?)

It’s possible the publisher could demand repayment of the advance, and maybe (but not likely) compensation for future lost sales.

They key question – and I have no idea how this may play out – is will the readers actually care? Will they feel betrayed and lied to? Or will they just enjoy the book as faction/fiction, and keep on buying her next one(s)…?

Will be fascinating to see!
 
Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
That'll be her fourth then?
Sorry, haven't seen them. And, as you see here, I haven't counted them!

It will be interesting to see how the sales go, post-revelation. As a straw in the wind, I read that the author of the much-lauded (by some)Where The Crawdads Sing also has a dubious past, in another country – and it hasn't seemed to make the slightest difference to readers or the book-buying public.
 

Further Articles from the Author Platform

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • Goodbye Eeyore, Hello Tigger
    Granny was churchy. She grew up in an era that saw living by the Bible as an important British chara ...
  • 21st Century Song of Summer
         It’s sobering to think that while summer is celebrated in some parts of the world with mus ...
  • Falcon Theory
    “So,” said Goethe to his friend Johann Peter Eckermann, “let us call it a Novelle, for what i ...
  • The Joy of Lit Mags
    While my first novel is tentatively making its way towards agents who already have too much to read, ...
  • Advertising and Social Media
    There has been much discussion in writing circles about how much a writer has to self-promote these ...
  • Future Abstract: Fights at Night
    SATIRE ALERT: The following abstract is entirely fictional and does not represent actual events or s ...
  • Great Novel Openings Quiz
    As writers, we all know how important it is to grip the reader from the very start. Intriguing, surp ...
Back
Top