When is a memoir not a memoir? How The Salt Path became a minefield

All anyone in the books world could talk about this week was the drama surrounding bestselling memoir The Salt Path.

Last weekend, the Observer published a series of allegations against the book’s author, Raynor Winn, accusing her of, among other things, taking money from a former employer. The Observer’s reporting also cast doubt on her husband, Moth’s diagnosis of corticobasal syndrome (CBS) – a central element of the story, in which the couple embark on a 630-mile walk after losing their home and learning of Moth’s condition.

On Wednesday, Winn published a response rebutting many of the claims, and included medical letters discussing Moth’s CBS. As for the money she allegedly took, Winn wrote: “Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.”

Wherever the actual truth lies, the furore raised an important question: do memoirists owe us the truth? Are they obliged to tell the full story, including the ugly bits? So for this week’s Bookmarks, I spoke to writers about the ethical demands of life writing.

And Irvine Welsh – whose next novel, Men in Love (a Trainspotting sequel), comes out later this month – tells us what he’s been reading lately.

How much poetic licence do memoirists have? Not much, according to Blake Morrison, author of the bestselling And When Did You Last See Your Father?

“Unless they’re categorised as autofiction, which allows for some mucking about, memoirs are meant to tell the truth”, he says. A fragile, tacit contract between writer and reader is drawn up, and if the reader is misled about one thing, they “may well disbelieve the lot”.

Authenticity is precious, particularly in our “post-truth” era, says Kathryn Hughes, a frequent reviewer for the Guardian who is also professor emerita of life writing at the University of East Anglia. A boom in memoir writing over the last 15 years could be down to a collective “anxious recognition that we live in a world where it is no longer possible to trust the narratives peddled by large cultural institutions as anything more than thinly disguised self-interest”.

“In such a cacophonous and contradictory environment, one woman’s heartfelt testimony about hiking with her husband along the limestone and chalk coastal path of south-west England starts to feel as solid as rock.”

And it’s true that people have eaten up Winn’s story: The Salt Path has sold more than 2m copies since its publication in 2018. A film adaptation starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs was released in the UK in May.

In her rebuttal, Winn admits that the book is “not about every event or moment in our lives”. Arguably, some cherrypicking is sensible. Memoirists, or at least the ones who want to sell, can’t “simply provide a transcript of reality”, says Hughes. “Not only would this be fantastically confusing, it would also be very dull.”

Historically, they have “sliced off minor characters, elided events, and fudged the timeline”. In John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, he “forgot to mention that he had a mother, let alone any siblings”. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell “barely mentions his wife, Eileen, who was with him in Spain, doing her bit in the fight against fascism”.

So far, so acceptable, says Hughes. “Readers often report feeling unsettled by discovering that their favourite memoirist played fast and loose with the literal truth in order to produce a narrative with pace and shape,” but they mostly “get over it”.

But what has happened with The Salt Path “appears to be a total breakdown of trust between memoirist and reader”, she adds. “If the allegations in the Observer turn out to be true,” it looks as though Winn’s “departure from the recorded truth arises from much more than a simple wish to protect the privacy of her wider family or to avoid getting bogged down in too many repetitive scenes involving wet tents”.

Winn may have crossed the line – a line hard to pick out because everyone has a different conception of the boundary “between artistic licence and telling fibs”.

“You see the point,” Joan Didion wrote in Slouching Towards Bethlehem. “I want to tell you the truth.” Did Winn “want to tell the truth, or did she think it needed tidying up so that she came across more engagingly?” asks Morrison. “Honesty is perilous but in memoir it’s essential. There isn’t much wriggle room.”

“I know several people who had their doubts about The Salt Path,” he added. “Who sensed, between the lines, that there was more to the story. There’s certainly more to it now.”

Want more on this story? Former Bookmarks writer Lucy Knight digs into how much memoirs are fact checked here.

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