Book Review: The Salt Path, Raynor Winn.
Like narrators that are raw, generous in spirit and offer some timely social commentary? Raynor Winn is your woman. The Salt Path is your book.
This is a story destined for the silver screen. I hope Danny Boyle, Ken Loach or Kate Herron, who recently directed a portion of Netflix's 'Sex Education', pick it up. I hope they do whatever sorcery it is that they specialise in that brings a story, of grit, charm, foreboding, passion, and austerity measures, from pages with words, story arcs, and messages often intangible to many, straight into the publics' lexicon, heart, and gut. Because this book is a sucker punch. And it needs to be delivered, with force, by the best.
I swayed under the weight of what it impressed upon me about the precariousness of our welfare system. Without spoiling more than the blurb on the back cover, I can surmise for you that this is a tale of a couple of 50 something-year-olds who are made homeless, after a lifetime of diligently farming too, and decide to go for a walk.
A very long one.
For months on end.
Walking because they have no choice? Maybe. Walking to find a way to mourn their previous life? Perhaps. Walking because safety nets were not an option? Definitely.
Ultimately, what you get in this book is a sharply navigated journey through a life collapsing because of terminal illness, bumbling bureaucracy, infuriating inequality and unfortunate mistakes with disastrous consequences.
A book where the protagonists are in a relationship that has spanned decades but has to find new-footing on alien paths, rather than continuing sure-footed along the ones they had so consciously carved out. It's a story of homelessness.
The kind we don't talk about. The kind where there's no rebellious teenager, dismal domestic situation or addiction coupled with a series of poor life choices. This homelessness is the sort that could come for a lot more of us. The type that comes from a seismic shift that our best-laid plans didn't envisage and lays waste to the futures we'd so long seen on the horizon.
Aside from the details of how Ray and Moth (there's no explanation for his name, which I rather like) fare with their new circumstances, there is also succinctly included details about homelessness in the UK, the conflicts that arise between locals and tourists in popular destinations and even a note about the way The National Trust shapes our experiences of 'the great outdoors' in the UK. Winn touches on these things briefly, but there's an intimacy about each strand she unpicks from the others to share the much smaller pictures that make our coastlines what they are. She delicately invites us to open up dialogues about these 'public' spaces and the future we want for them.
Buy the book already. It's such a deftly put together piece, fit for tears, conversation starters and reminding us to be kinder with our assumptions and judgements of others. It snags further points for being non-fiction without being dry.
It's also refreshing to have a book written by a woman that could focus on the sentimental but instead tempers that trend with wry observations, reserved emotion and an unflinchingly glacial warning about the future of the UK, without even a whiff of sanctimony.
By the end, I'm sure you'll agree that we need more Winns.
"We were free here, battered by the elements, hungry, tired, cold, but free. Free to walk on or not, to stop or not."
Quotes from the Salt Path book:
"Really? What to do in the menopause: become homeless and walk 630 miles with a rucksack on your back. Ideal. Plenty of weight-bearing exercise: at least I wouldn't have to worry about osteoporosis."
"A girl with dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail sat behind the desk in the council offices, speaking to us in a strong Welsh accent: 'Well, if you're not going to die soon, like in the next year, then you're not that ill are you, so I can't call you a priority, can I?' That was the moment we knew it for certain: we'd rather be in the tent."
"Rhododendrons closed around us, above and below, spreading across the Cliffside. Resilient and persecuted plants that, contrary to belief, lived in the UK millennia ago. Fossils have been found that proved they lived here before the last ice age, but native plant status is reserved for plants that flourished after the ice had receded"
You might like this book if you liked:
Red Sky at Night: The Book of Lost Countryside Wisdom, Jane Struthers.
Wild, Cheryl Strayed.
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr.
