Spare ~Prince Harry
Prince Harry. Spare. These words, along with Harry’s iconic bearded face are the only things on the front cover of this much anticipated book. Random House takes some credit on the spine but the actual author, the ghost writer, J.R Moehringer is not listed. Even in the back flap where the jacket designers are listed, J.R. Moehringer is not there. In fact, he’s given only a sentence of a nod in the acknowledgements on the very last page. Now, I understand that this is how things are done. That ghost writers, and in particular this ghost writer has done this for other celebrities like Andre Aggassi and that their job is to take the story and become a vehicle for which that story is shared with the world. It’s even possible that J.R. Moehringer did not want his name to appear on the cover-- he declined with Andre Agassi, however because so much of Harry’s story is about telling the world the whole truth (even about frozen appendages) and about him battling false press I did expect that he would have insisted that J.R. Moehringer’s name be on the cover or at the very least, on the flap.
I did enjoy Spare. The story is heartfelt and gut-wrenching and Moehringer does a beautiful job crafting it together in a bookended reader pleasing way. Harry’s story is one we may have felt we knew but what we knew was what the palace wanted us to know, and Harry shows us there is so much more to a person than a press release or a tabloid leak. Spare is a history lesson, it’s a love story and a commentary on celebrity in our society. There will be people that condemn this book for being too open, or possibly not open enough (but did they read about the frozen appendage?). There will be people who like it and people who hate it as is the case with all stories, especially well-known ones. There will be some who dismiss Harry’s story because of his privilege and to that I can’t help but scratch my head. Our world is obsessed with popularity, and many given the opportunity to be famous, would. Look at the number of people attempting TikTok fame. Harry’s notoriety was not a choice he made. He was born into it, and some (wanting that) may call it lucky, but for Harry it’s what plagued him his whole life. The tabloid mania surrounding his mom took her from him and continued to strike at him repeatedly throughout his life. After all this time of being silenced and being told what to do Harry gives us his story, his words, his experiences and probably for the first time, we hear about real life behind those ivy walls, beautifully shared, with nothing to spare.
My favorite quote appears on page 364. I believe it says so much about Harry’s perspective on life, in particular, his own. “Life…wow, it really all begins with a struggle for freedom.”
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