Don't let book scandal destroy

SO WHERE are you at on The Salt Path? Which is a sentence, I imagine, that will divide readers three ways - those who know what it's all about and don't much care for all the gossip, those who know and also care, because it really HAS been quite the scandal, and those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about. (Or perhaps think I'm going to talk about some sort of wellbeing woo-woo.) Me? Well, I'm majorly transfixed. The uncovering of an alleged backstory so at odds with that narrated in a bestselling "unflinchingly honest" memoir is shaping up to become the most fascinating moral conundrum I've come across in many years.

- LYNNE BARRETT-LEE

I was off on holiday the day the news broke (if you're so inclined, you'll find the original report in The Observer and the author's response on her website), eventually pulling up on a pretty campsite in the Vendée, and like a teen stuck in a gite with nobly screen-averse parents - Chop, chop! Get your Crocs on! It's time for a bear hunt! - was scuttling around furtively in search of sufficient signal that I could keep abreast of every single development.

Of which there have been quite a lot, it turns out, with some journalists trying to put flesh on the bones, while others were more intent on picking them over, and trying to analyse what All Of This Means. And below the line, as is normal in that furious space, were cries of "outrageous!" And lots of other similarly jolly epithets. And all delivered with such a noisy thrum of moral indignation that they gave the hornet family who lived in a nest just outside our caravan a pretty decent run for their money.

But the story also spoke to me because I have skin in this game. A game in which trust is such a given. There is no suggestion that Sally Walker (the author name, Raynor Winn, is a pseudonym) wrote The Salt Path in collaboration with a ghostwriter, but, co-writer or not, the process is the same. Person writes a book, or book proposal, seeks an agent and a publisher, and, if successful, a contract is duly drawn up, and, down the line, the finished book hits the shops. And, in this case, becomes a global bestseller. And spawns a Hollywood movie, too.