The Salt Path by Raynor Winn is acclaimed by judges as ‘an absolutely brilliant story about the human capacity to endure’
A British woman’s account of how she and her terminally ill husband embarked on a 630-mile walk along the South West Coast Path after being made homeless has been shortlisted for the Costa book awards
Bailiffs were banging on the windows of their Welsh farmhouse when Raynor Winn
came up with the idea to pack a few belongings into rucksacks and set out from Minehead along the coastal path
Her husband Moth was diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease but the couple had nowhere else to go
“We really didn’t have anything better to do at half past three on a Thursday afternoon than to start a 630-mile walk,” writes Winn in The Salt Path
but at least if we made that first step we had somewhere to go
Winn recalls shivering at night in cheap sleeping bags
scraping together their coins for a bag of chips and improvising meals – cooking bladderwrack with tins of tuna and “gristly limpets popped off the rocks straight into the pan”
Winn’s memoir is one of four books in the running for the Costa biography of the year prize, alongside autobiographies by the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, Slits guitarist Viv Albertine and Oxford professor Bart van Es’s investigation into the harrowing childhood of the girl his grandparents fostered when she was hidden from the Nazis
Biography judge Anita Sethi said the panel had seen a definite tilt towards memoirs over biographies in the category this year
“Whether it’s because there is something in the atmosphere at the moment – more people have the courage to share their personal stories since the #MeToo movement – the memoir generally seemed to be stronger,” she said
praising The Sea Path as “an absolutely brilliant story about the human capacity to endure”
“Most people have preconceptions that homelessness comes with addiction problems or mental health problems
but so many people find themselves homeless through unexpected circumstances,” said Winn
who now rents a flat with her husband on the coastal path
“You’d stop and chat to people as you were walking and they’d say
‘How come you have so much time to walk so far?’ And we’d say
we’ve nowhere else to go.’ They would physically recoil
So in a self-protective way as time went along we would say: ‘We’ve sold our house
Not as well as he was at the end of our walk
but still a lot better than consultants say he should be
So we just keep walking and hope that’s what’s making the difference.”
the latter also longlisted for the Booker this year
which centres on a man who comes back war a stranger to his wife
which sees a daughter consumed by the mystery of her mother’s life after she is found dead
Three of the four writers in the running for the Costa poetry award are also debut authors: Zaffar Kunial
The children’s book prize shortlist sees former winners Hilary McKay and David Almond competing with debut young adult writer Matt Killeen and his thriller set in Nazi Germany
as well as Filipino author Candy Gourlay’s Bone Talk
when they will go into contention for the overall Costa book of the year award
Last year’s book of the year went to Helen Dunmore’s final collection of poetry
The Costas are for the year’s most enjoyable books
and are open to authors resident in the UK and Ireland