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robinshakespeare 's review for:
Spare
by Prince Harry
Sambuca gold by day, Sambuca black by night.
A pretty mediocre read which didn't satisfy.
On the plus side, it's the first book I've read with descriptions of frontline combat in Afghanistan, which was fascinating. The author seems to believe his lack of fear is because he's a dark, traumatised man - and not because he's one of the most privileged and powerful men in the world. Harry, shockingly, makes the circular argument that he only killed 25 people because he had learned to dehumanise them in the army - and you need to dehumanise people to be able to kill them.
I showed him my todger, softened by Elizabeth Arden.
Meghan Markle seems to have used invicta-style feminine dating tactics over the course of their first few dates, which amused me greatly. Harry thinks he's normal because he shopped in TK Maxx for a few years, and only spent £200 a go. Ditto in later chapters because his furniture was from IKEA.
On the positive side, there were elegant descriptions of how memories can be repressed and then reawakened by discussing them. It was a portrayal of trauma, intensified by taboo, that made good sense.
Time, as the doctor said, would heal my todger. But would it heal my heart?
My frustration comes almost entirely from the ghostwriting aspect. So many sentences are in creative-writing-masters style, endless metaphors which somehow try to justify this as a book rather than the long-form journalism it essentially is - but which don't add any meaning. The book would have been much improved by limiting itself to simple, conversational language to reflect the conversations that formed it. I would much rather have read a long form interview.
At times, Harry (seemingly unaware) comes off so badly when making excuses for his behaviour that I start to wonder - what is the ghostwriter's agenda? Is he deliberately trying to make the duke look bad? Could he have a second income stream resting on embedding that impression in the text? Are the authors just completely clueless?
Ultimately my motivation for reading this book was the perverse hunger to understand the royal family, the social roles they play within their own families, and find a side to take and an opinion to have. Because the book wasn't written by its claimed author and narrator, and even that narrator will have had so much advice on what to share and what to hide, and the book would then have been vetted by press officers and advisors for content - it was impossible to read into language the way you normally can. In a manner that made me seriously empathise with bible scholars, there is such a confluence of agendas in this text that it obscures far more than it reveals.