I have finished reading "Spare" and feel ready to share my thoughts. I took copious notes on my Kindle throughout the reading process.
First of all, as many have stated in other reviews, the book is well-crafted. J.R. Moehringer's gift for memoir is apparent. I do not want to state this as fact, but in my opinion, almost any moment in this book where any reflection on Harry's story and its themes and connection to others comes from Moehringer. This does sometimes lead to contradictions. For example, early in the book, Prince Harry makes it clear that he is not a literary person, which is also very widely known. He opens the book with a quote from Faulkner, but not because he'd ever heard of Faulkner- he merely pulled it from "Brainquotes.com" because he liked it. Yet, literary and classical allusions are peppered throughout the book. The owner of the Daily Mail is described as "the impossibly Dickensian-sounding Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere." A bodyguard who has a panic attack next to him in Afghanistan and begins talking about how he knew the deployment was a bad idea is described as "an unappreciated Cassandra" who Harry tells to "stuff a sock in it." At one point, Harry wonders if his newfound attachment to his beard is Freudian "security blanket" or Jungian "Beard as Mask." It stands out because most of the book is so inwardly focused, with very little thought about how others think or feel, and because Harry makes his lack of academic curiosity and accomplishment very plain in several places. I think most of this, as well as musings on how Einstein described light, had to come from Moehringer.
There's also a section where Harry shares how he felt about William getting married in Westminster Abbey. He was quite uncomfortable with the idea of William getting married in the place where they buried their mother, saying he couldn't help thinking about all the bodies buried in the place. He says "Everything in that building spoke of death . It wasn’t just the memories of Mummy’s funeral . More than three thousand bodies lay beneath us , behind us . They were buried under the pews , wedged into the walls . War heroes and poets , scientists and saints , the cream of the Commonwealth . Isaac Newton , Charles Dickens , Chaucer, plus thirteen kings and eighteen queens , they were all interred there . It was still so hard to think of Mummy in the realm of Death . Mummy , who’d danced with Travolta , who’d quarreled with Elton , who’d dazzled the Reagans — could she really be in the Great Beyond with the spirits of Newton and Chaucer ?" Later, when he visits a Mayan temple. he thinks of it as temple of death, a "Mayan Westminster Abbey." Yet, when the time comes for him to marry Meghan, Westminster Abbey is his first choice of venue and he feels slighted that they are denied it. I found it interesting that the contradiction is there and no real exploration of why. Additionally, the timeline in this section gets incredibly fuzzy. Harry describes frustration at the palace dragging their feet to confirm the details of when and where the wedding will take place. This is not supported by the historical record. Their engagement was announced November 27,2017. The wedding date and venue was announced just 18 days later. This does not seem like an unusual length of time to confirm something this logistically complex.
I found the first two sections more interesting and illuminating than the third, though the press has focused mostly on the gossip contained in the third section.
The first section deals with Harry's childhood and his reaction to Diana's death. It would be hard to read this section without some empathy for the 12 year old Harry, no matter how exasperated one is with 38 year old Harry. He's clearly lost, and he struggles to recognize when adults are trying to help him. For example, the history teacher at Ludgrove who he feels is bullying him for not understanding his family history actually comes off as extremely kind- even giving Harry a present of a ruler full of rulers- a ruler that had every King and Queen from the Norman Conquest all the way to his Granny. This section also contains the very jarring section about the matron who was not sexually arousing, which has been shared here already. It contains an additional note that wasn't unkind but was thoughtless, when it describes a teacher who uses a wheelchair as "confined to a wheelchair" and frames the story primarily around what a pain it was for the students to help him in and out of the classroom. Even if this what he thought as a young boy, one would hope that years of working with disabled veterans had taught him more about disability awareness then he shows here.
The second section deals with his time in the Army. I went into this section believing the media had been a bit unfair to Harry in characterizing the disclosure of his number of kills as a reckless threat to his own and national security. I walked away aligned with the military experts who have spoken out and deemed it unwise. There are a few reasons for this. One, Harry describes a training exercise and how he absorbed it here: "We were a Christian army, fighting a militia sympathetic to Muslims . Our mission : Evade the enemy, escape the forbidding terrain." I think framing anything having to do with that war as a Holy War of Christians v. Muslims was inappropriate, given the religious diversity of the United Kingdom and the fact that this was a very politically insensitive take. Second, he describes an evolution of the Taliban's tactics observed during his second tour. He says "They’d got better at hiding too. They could effortlessly melt into a village, blend into the civilian population, or vaporize into their network of tunnels. They didn’t run away—it was far more diffuse than that, more mystical." Even given his extensive descriptions of how permission to fire was granted, I think this leaves him far too open to accusations that some of those killed were civilians rather than militants. It may not be fair, but that is how it will be used as propaganda. Third, he describes the weapon he handled as something difficult for most people to handle but not him. He is very proud of his abilities here, and likens it to throwing darts at a pub. The follow up sentence describes the carnage by saying "That’s what the flechette was , in fact , a lethal burst of eighty 5 - inch tungsten darts . I remembered in Garmsir hearing about our forces having to pick pieces of Taliban guys out of trees after a direct hit from flechette." I would think that the description here would be easy to use as propaganda- both the part where he compares it to throwing darts, and the ease with which he relates how it ripped apart bodies.
The military section was probably the most engaging, but also left the most questions about Harry's state of mind.
The third section describes his major mental health challenges when he comes out of the military. He makes it clear that he has PTSD, but he also doesn't believe its onset was from his tour of duty. He believes the onset was Diana's death and frequently blames the press for triggering it. I have a lot of sympathy for what he went through here, while I think his outlook is very narrow and actually takes him away from relating to other soldiers as much as he might have. He seems to believe his PTSD experience is separate and unique from theirs and I think it has probably made it harder for him to find community and help.
Then he meets Meghan. It is extremely jarring to go from reading about this man who is an absolute mess one moment to a fully realized individual making clear eyed decisions about his future the next. You walk away believing that he's deified Meghan in ways similar to the ways he deified his mother and wondering if it was good for either of them. Their relationship moved at lighting speed- from instagram messages to text, to a first date, a second date the next night, and the immediate decision that they were in a relationship. You very much get the sense that he was beyond ready to be married and settled down and that when he decided Meghan was THE ONE any doubts were very quickly chased away and any person who cautioned him to go slowly and think through his plans was viewed as hostile to her and therefore to him.
He describes what happened to them within the family as a slow-rolling catastrophe, but the reader will be left wondering if it really was? It was fast, and the primary catalyst for how quickly things moved were the two of them. At one stage, Harry views nearly any bureaucratic delay as a deliberate obstacle to his happiness.
Finally, my biggest impression: if Harry was ever going to tell his story in a way that reflected back on his own actions, this was the chance. It was a book written over a period of years, with the help of an expert writer. It was 400 pages of his story. Yet, there is not a moment in this book where he looks at any of his own actions and says "I shouldn't have done that" or "I could have been kinder/better here" or "Maybe I should have asked my brother what he meant when he said that getting married this soon would be hard on me." He's incredibly angry, but since he can't allow himself to be angry at either Meghan or himself, it is almost all deflected onto his brother.
