By the time Spare hit shelves on Jan. 10, Prince Harry’s name had been in the headlines nearly every (or is it actually every day?) for over a month. It started with the Dec. 8 release of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, aimed at unveiling a new, more personal side of Harry and wife Meghan Markle, and the many (many) subsequent headlines and think pieces, followed by the pre-publication tell-alls with 60 Minutes and Good Morning America, all culminating in the release of the thing itself, as even the least cynical among us can’t help but question whether there is anything left to learn about the prince. There is, of course, because he is a 38-year-old man who has gone to war and lost his mother tragically and dressed up as a Nazi for fun, all of which is parsed out with varying degrees of reflection (the least amount of which is saved for the Nazis) in a book that is often written in a style that quite matches its title.
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Spare, written with help from JR Moehringer, whose own memoir became the Ben Affleck-starring film The Tender Bar, is divided into three sections dedicated to his childhood and the emotional toll of Princess Diana’s death, his time in the military and his relationship with Meghan, respectively. Those with a middling amount of royal knowledge will be familiar with the plot points he discusses (the sordid details of his parents’ divorce, King Charles III’s inability to emote to his young sons, Harry’s years over-partying and getting caught over-partying by the tabloids, the seemingly never-ending inquests into Diana’s death) and to hear them described in his own words in the book is both poignant and a little bit repetitive.
There’s a rather heartbreaking passage, when Harry recounts asking his bodyguard to show him the restricted police photos of Diana’s crash, in the hopes that it might make her death feel real (it didn’t), and another in which he asks his driver to take him through the exact tunnel (Pont de l’Alma) where Diana crashed, at the exact speed she was going (65 mph). He retells his version of the Concert for Diana memorial benefit, when he and brother Prince William took the stage and could conjure none of the words to correctly memorialize their mother — a flub that he chalks up to their still-repressed emotions and which still incites guilt. He describes the panic attacks that often accompanied his public appearances, and the callous jokes Will once made at his expense.
Harry also, pointedly, writes about moments that brought him backlash, often falling short of the empathy and responsibility-taking required for the reputation clearing he appears to hope for — most notably the time he was photographed in a Nazi uniform as part of a “Native and Colonial” theme party. “I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,” he writes of his costume decision-making process. “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.” The prince acknowledges the err in judgement, and his naïveté, but his decision to foist some of the blame onto his brother and sister-in-law, combined with a less-than-satisfying apology, will rub many readers the wrong way.
The juiciest revelations in Spare come most often as asides, factoids Harry drops in almost rapid succession. There’s the time he did mushroom chocolates at Courteney Cox’s house, thanks to encouragement from a Lego Batman Movie actor who goes unnamed but certainly seems to be Will Arnett (contrary to the meme that has been circulating on social media, he did not ask the moon for help during his trip). Or the casual reference to a friendship with Tom Hardy (he borrowed a Mad Max: Fury Road outfit for a far less ill-advised costume a few years ago). Or the allegation that Will and Kate were massive Suits fans before he started dating Meghan, but too proud to admit it to her face. In a passage about Markle’s final months on the show, he writes, “The show writers were frustrated, because they were often advised by the Palace comms team to change lines of dialogue, what her character would do, how she would act,” without further elaboration.
Imbued throughout the memoir is a rather deep hostility, felt in part toward The Firm (understandable) and in part toward his brother (less understandable, a bit more cringe). A list, now, of some of the accusations and complaints Harry levels at “Willy”: He told Harry to pretend not to know him while they were in school together at Eton (“Willy always hated it when anyone made the mistake of thinking of us as a package deal”); he got mad when Harry decided he liked Africa, too; he refused to spend Harry’s pre-wedding night with him, even though Harry did the same for Will; he won’t go to therapy; he didn’t answer Harry’s texts after their grandmother died; he was given nicer living quarters than Harry; he is an “alarming” amount of bald. They are all moments that, while supporting Harry’s not-yet-explicitly named thesis that Will Is Bad and Harry Is Good, don’t rise far beyond the level of the typical family feud. They are hard to write about without coming off as petty, which is why most people choose not to write about them at all.
It’s hard not to feel exploitative in rehashing the most intimate moments of Prince Harry’s memoir, especially when he has spent the past several years trying to show people how the constant reporting on his personal life destroyed any semblance of the thing itself. But that’s in keeping with the central paradox of Spare: It’s a book that is simultaneously a plea for privacy and a cry for attention.
