Is Spare by Prince Harry A Heavy Dose Of TMI Or A Personal Memoir Of The Life & Times Of A Once Upon A Time Prince?
It’s the fastest selling non fiction book in the UK, ghost written with flair by JR Moehringer, people all over the world are divided by how the story is coming out. Has he said too much, should he have revealed so much about his family, did he have to make it all so public?
It is ironic how a majority of the British press is monetizing the launch of Spare albeit with mostly negative reviews, shredding apart every interview he has appeared in (and there have been many) including ones he did with the UK media, oops, more monetization there). It is also interesting that Harry continues to clarify the words of the book in successive interviews as he responds to criticism.
Here’s what happens Harry and a message to all prospective memoir writers
Once you’ve written what you’ve written, it is out there to be interpreted, reviewed, torn apart or lauded and, in all possible manner of speaking, public property for any media outlet to spin their story. It is just like an artist who paints a picture and steps back for people to appraise it, or a film maker, or show producer who launches his work on streaming channels or in cinemas and must wait for the reviews to pour in.
It is also interesting that, many have to forge a relationship with the media to ensure that the reviews, if not doctored, are relatively positive or balanced. But it is also clear that the war waged by Harry against the tabloids in the UK will mean that he has already skewed his chances of positive reviews – but like they say, any publicity is good publicity and the book is selling to prove that point!
What is really genius is that, despite the overdose of information on Spare in online interviews and with people consuming the content day and night (part of the reason is, that’s all we hear all day), you would think that the written word would no longer stand against the audio or video version?
But that’s not true.
The book is, so far, selling like a hot cake, or many hot cakes, and killing it in the sales department!
So what’s so special about a memoir that’s not The Crown, the Netflix Docuseries and not an in-person interview from the author himself?
Awaiting my copy from The Book Depository which, I hope, is in the mail, so I’m going to go by online versions too, and why I joined the queue of potential readers.
1. The Book Is Well Written & Conveys A Whole Lot Of Mood!
“I love my Mother Country, and I love my family, and I always will,” Harry writes. “I just wish, at the second-darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me.”
The book is interspersed with a sense of real pain, a need to be sorted, and fix what went wrong over so many long years. Perhaps many who read it will relate to the sense of loss, the need for reconciliation with a loved one, the need for healing. These words perhaps, are most poignant and strike an unmistakeable chord even in the most cynical of hearts!
2. The Book Aims To Throw Light On An Issue That Has Never Been Discussed
“Most soldiers can’t tell you precisely how much death is on their ledger,” Harry writes of his tours during the war. “My number: 25.”
He added: “While in the heat of combat, I didn’t think of those 25 as people. You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I’d been trained to ‘other-ize’ them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering.”
Harry’s stint in the army was followed by PTSD and panic attacks and he has now come out to say that his sole reason for mentioning the troubling paragraphs above is for people who have been engaged in military service not to resort to depression or suicide. It comes from a place of having been there, of learning how it feels like, and an urge to help others who might undergo the same experience.
This revelation can be taken by many as unnecessary and too much information or, as a need to reach out and explain what goes through the mind of a soldier, any soldier in any part of the world and how he can never make sense of the lives he took and the honours he was awarded because of them. It’s a morbid truth, yet a very real one.
3. The Rhetoric Against The Book In the UK Is Staggering, Reason Enough To Read For Yourself & Find Out Why?
News channels, media publications etc are all hammering the book (despite the rate at which it’s flying off the bookshelves) and ripping it apart, page by page, word for word. So although we feel that the Royal family can’t fight back, they don’t send out personal statements, they, in effect, don’t need to fight back, their war being waged through a barrage of negative media reviews on the book itself. Take it anyway you want, but why would a personal memoir raise so much fury?
Because, the Royal family is the face of how things are done in the UK, the face of Britain, the tourism deal maker, the number of people who visit the Buckingham palace annually just to view the changing of the guards is witness alone to that. So, much as we like to call out Harry’s departure from reason and privacy, that calling out itself is firing the book sales.
Apparently it’s also leading to a massive dip in Harry’s popularity ratings but that’s not what he needs right now. He is a man with no job, a lifestyle and family to support and this book will certainly do it for him. Commercialism? Hell yes, and he has to live, like the rest of the tabloids who monetize on his life stories.
It’s a tit for tat and that’s about it.
4. Is it Hypocritical? Maybe?
Or maybe not. Harry waged a perpetual war against the British tabloids and mentioned that they have bullied his family, persecuted them, prevented him from living a safe, secure life, and he uses his mother’s death as an example of how toxic and fatal it can get. Here’s the deal, if you want to control the narrative about yourself and the media isn’t doing that, you have to do it yourself.
Harry insists it was not the lack of privacy but the bullying that got him. Coming out with a very personal memoir will invite more bullying for sure, but those are the stakes he wants to play with. It is perhaps, a result of the PTSD and subsequent trauma he suffered with an absence of a parent in his life and whether he lives to regret that later, or not, only time will tell, but the book in itself, the subsequent interviews, the public speaking, the ability to have control of what is put out there about yourself is all a form of therapy and yes, if the fallout is the family, then let the family sort it out between themselves. Do we really need to take sides? Why not view the book as essentially, a personal recollection of events.
There have been many other personal memoirs written and they do have a semblance of tell all in them. Most times, the aggrieved party will reach out and resolve the issues, or not. But the bystanders are there to appraise the book, the power of the story, the personal struggle the human element, the prose, as it is – Spare is being appraised on so many more angles than that, which is what is driving its sales by the way!
5. Is The Book A Whole Lot Of TMI? (Too Much Information)?
Oh yes, say his nay sayers, even those who supported him earlier. Oh yes, say most people. These are private matters not to be discussed in a tell all book. Well, again, going back to the therapy, one has to understand and look within our own family. When does a family member, friends, relative step outside the family circle and talk about their experiences?
When they have tried again, repeatedly, miserably to talk within the family, address their grievances and they’ve failed miserably.
Harry’s issues are unresolved personal grievances in a family that is so private that they might have failed to address the unsaid, the unspoken truths lingering in the air between them. It is but human nature to do what Harry did, and yes, it requires a lot of guts or stupidity, (only time will tell which), there is a fine line dividing the two by the way.
The UK Royal family is a topic that engenders either hate, love or indifference. But even the indifference has a derogatory, cynical shade to it, so I would broadly call it hate, or a negative emotion at best. Their legacy is one that strives hard to erase some of the moments of the past, to move ahead and stay relevant, but their charm, their presence, their keeping away from the common people, their idiosyncrasies about not wearing coloured nail polish, shaving a beard, wearing a certain hemline, interacting in a certain manner with the public, not having an opinion on practically anything is viewed more antiquated than modern, but also the reason for the adulation they receive from their supporters – it is precisely this keeping away from the public, this secrecy that Harry has unsheathed so blatantly that has left them in a bit of a no man’s land.
Can the British Royals use the messages in Spare to pick up their feet and move with the times? Will the competition from Harry and Meghan spur them on to modernize? The Royals carry immense soft influence on not just the British population, but beyond as well. Will they make the tide of Spare work for them or will they be too busy wallowing in remorse and anger to pull themselves out and redefine everything they stand for?
A million dollar question that only time will unravel! For now, read Spare and decide for yourselves – whether it’s too much TMI or a collector’s item of the times we live in!
