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Review #1 by Roberta O’Hara

There are two sides to every story. Those sides are perception --- or, perhaps better put, perception of truth.

With all the hoopla that has been in the ether the past few months surrounding SPARE, along with the Netflix series and the countless interviews, I made a conscious decision to approach Prince Harry’s memoir with the above in mind. There are two sides to every story. The tabloid gossip and so-called news has been brutal, even heartbreaking at times, for a world that has watched (perhaps too closely) the shattered childhoods of Princess Diana’s boys. I wanted to give Harry an honest read.

What I didn’t expect was to walk away from the book not only maintaining that perception is in the eye of the one doing the experiencing, but also feeling a new-found respect and sympathy for Harry.

"What I didn’t expect was to walk away from the book not only maintaining that perception is in the eye of the one doing the experiencing, but also feeling a new-found respect and sympathy for Harry."

The idea of a “spare to the heir” takes the notion of a favorite child to new and deplorable heights. Smaller rooms, a lesser cottage, even fewer sausages at breakfast --- Harry’s role as the “other,” the almost dispensable one, was always on the surface, a constant reminder. He was, in his own words, “the shadow, the support, the Plan B” to his brother, Will. And for a child who had lost his mother, the negation and isolation compounded. Loss was a constant throughout his life. Even on Will’s wedding day, Harry sensed the “feeling that this was yet another farewell under this horrid roof. Another sundering. The brother I’d escorted into Westminster Abbey that morning was gone --- forever.”

Charles’ marriage to Camilla resulted in less time with his father. It’s no wonder that it was years before Harry could come to terms with the fact that Diana was actually dead, not just in safe hiding, away from the royal games and expectations. Harry spent the rest of his childhood and much of his young adult life looking for signs of her.

And yet, Harry couldn’t cry. He recalled tears briefly --- once --- at his mother’s funeral. But then not again for 17 years (“of suppressed grief”) when asked about Diana by his then-girlfriend, Cressida. This moment was perhaps the beginning of a catharsis long overdue. And SPARE is definitely a culmination of catharsis.

Since all the juicy bits are “out there” in the news, there aren’t surprises of shocking value. Everyone has heard about the frostbite, the physical fight with Will, and the line about Camilla doing spin control.

SPARE reinforces the brutality of the British press, the downright trickery to which they will stoop in order to get a photograph, a tidbit that they can twist into something salacious, a story of half-truths. The memoir is rife with tales of the press inserting themselves in situations to get the “news” (in quotes because calling it journalism in the purest sense of what respectable reporters do doesn’t seem justified). From Diana’s death through the rest of Harry’s life, the press has been a constant presence --- mosquitos looking for their next meal.

“For much of my adult life there had been paps [paparazzi] waiting for me outside public places. Sometimes a mob of them, sometimes a handful…. But it wasn’t just public places. I’d be walking down a side street…and they’d leap from a phone box or from under a parked car.” And Harry feared that “[s]ome person, or persons, extremely close to me and Willy, was sneaking stuff to the newspapers….” His father’s only advice: “Don’t read it, darling boy.”

Harry longed for something that made sense to him because the loss he experienced didn’t, nor did the treatment he and his family received at the hands of reporters. “Please,” he begged, “put me on a battlefield where there are clear rules of engagement.” And so he deployed to the Iraqi border, to escape. The long passages about Harry’s service stood out for me; they showed a courage not often attributed to royals whose service was more for show than actual combat. Harry’s duty was real. Much has been made about his “kills,” the press touting that he bragged about this, but in words he didn’t. He states the facts of his service plainly. Pride in his military service, yes; pride in numbers, no.

And, finally, the romance. And the racism. Meghan Markle. Harry fell quickly, and so did Meghan. Harry’s writing about their early courtship is, well, beautiful. (It’s equaled only by his stories of Botswana, where he so clearly feels a comfort level he had seldom experienced in his life to date.) But once the relationship was made public, the vicious cycle began again, and Meghan was villainized quickly. “Tormenting Meghan Markle has become a national sport that shames us,” read a headline in The Guardian.

Everyone knows the end of the story --- the wedding, the adorable children, the move to America. And now this book. Where Harry bares his soul. Where he is allowed to be vulnerable and tells his story, from his point of view. Critics and wannabe critics will argue forever about the veracity of what Harry shares, but I see it this way: a boy who lost his mother in a horribly visible way and lived in the proverbial glass castle was tortuously scarred yet managed to build a new life for himself on his terms. And finally learned how to cry --- tears of pain and joy.
 

Review #2 by Jesse Kornbluth

SPARE is the fastest-selling nonfiction book ever, with 1.43 million copies sold on its launch day. I wasn’t among those avid first-day buyers. I wasn’t one of the 17 million viewers of Oprah’s interview with Harry and Meghan, and I do not live in one of the 28 million households that watched their Netflix documentary. I hadn’t savored the press reports of the book’s revelations and inaccuracies, or read beyond the headlines of the damage the book may deliver to the Crown, or cheer their $135 million deals that look a lot like a raised finger to the family that refused to pay even their much-needed security team. Truly, my interest in the Harry and Meghan story extended no further than Tina Brown’s book, THE PALACE PAPERS, and her unforgettable quip at her publication party: “This is a book Meghan Markle wishes she’d read four years ago.”

And yet a copy of SPARE was on my desk the other day when my daughter walked in. Her face was a rictus of young disgust. As was her tone: “Ooooo…why?” I explained that the ghostwriter was J.R. Moehringer, author of one of my favorite memoirs, THE TENDER BAR. Harry is, by his own admission, not a reader. He is surely no writer. As I occasionally ghostwrite, I explained to my daughter that I was reading the book to see what I could learn from Moehringer, who reportedly earned $1 million for his services on SPARE.

"The high-level gossip regularly detonates, keeping us reading...and we feel for the kid who believes his mother is alive, just elsewhere, because then she’s not really gone. But there’s no getting around it: until Harry meets Meghan Markle, this is one sad book."

So let me pass over the book’s greatest hits --- there’s a laundry list of them here and here --- and deal with Moehringer’s considerable achievement. He structured the book as a case history of a great trauma: the death of Harry’s mother and the inability of his stiff-upper-lip father and equally traumatized brother to help him.

Not long ago, I read this: “Trauma is stored in the body and released in relationships.” I asked a therapist if she believed that was true. “100%” she said.

“Released” in relationships is not a good thing. It means that, when triggered, the trauma is expressed as anger or tears or even violence on an innocent, baffled lover, friend or relative. In the classic TRAUMA AND RECOVERY: The Aftermath of Violence — from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, Judith Herman writes, “When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often, secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.”

Most of SPARE is a chronicle of Harry’s symptoms: drugs, endless confrontations with paparazzi, stalled relationships with women, and, of course, the ongoing war with his family. There are exciting chapters --- Harry’s experiences in the Army are vivid and detailed --- and his high-speed drive through the Paris tunnel where his mother died is a heartbreaker. But the real plot engine is dish. The high-level gossip regularly detonates, keeping us reading --- kudos to Moehringer --- and we feel for the kid who believes his mother is alive, just elsewhere, because then she’s not really gone. But there’s no getting around it: until Harry meets Meghan Markle, this is one sad book.

From the second Meghan appears, the clouds clear and the sun shines, and we are reading a thrilling love story: a wounded warrior is healed by a fantastic woman, who creates a family with him that he is dedicated to protect. Could there possibly be a happier ending?

Stories that end this well --- stories that are too good to be true --- generally omit disquieting realities. The main one: Harry and Meghan have created a family unit almost as insular as the royals. The New York Times review nibbles at this:

One kind of wants to snatch the remote control from his hands and press into them a copy of Joseph Heller’s CATCH 22…because of the seemingly inescapable paradox of his situation…

In the prince’s full-throated renunciation of fame and royalty with all its punishing invasions of privacy, he has only become more famous, if not more regal, trading his proximity to the throne for the No. 1 spot on a cushioned chair.

Finally, a personal note. When Diana died on August 31, 1997, I was the Editorial Director of America Online. I was spending the Labor Day weekend at an off-the-grid inn a hundred miles from AOL headquarters in Dulles, Virginia. I rushed back to the office the next morning. Right… Labor Day --- the building was locked. (Unreal, but the internet wasn’t 24/7 then.) On Tuesday, my team belatedly started to build a memorial special. When it launched, it was like no special ever seen on AOL. Instead of links to news accounts, all the links went to message boards that asked for emotional responses: Grieve. Share. For her family. AOL then had three million members. In a few days, we had 4.5 million messages.

When I recall those numbers, I cut almost everyone in SPARE a little slack. Not the media --- there are killers with better ethics than the British press and its ghoulish photographers. And it’s hard to forgive Charles and Camilla, and Kate and William, for tolerating and even encouraging a racist campaign against Meghan.

But context matters. And in context, I see a traumatized family in a traumatized world. The death of Diana was like 9/11 for the royals. No one who was alive that day will ever forget it. Or not feel it. That ongoing trauma --- Diana’s long shadow --- sadly will be a silent, ghostly presence in what Harry and Meghan want to believe is their beautifully tended garden of a marriage.