AFTER MUCH ANTICIPATION, Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare went on sale today and has been largely hailed as a hit by critics.
And despite much of its contents being well-known due to the book mistakenly going on sale in Spain last week, it remains on course to be a hit with readers too.
The book has become the fastest selling non-fiction book ever, according to its publisher.
The tell-all tale has been boosted into the record books with 400,000 hardback, e-book and audio format copies being snapped up, they stated.
It has soared to number one in the Irish Amazon best sellers chart and was listed as a bestseller on the company’s audiobook arm Audible.
Writing in The Guardian, chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins describes Spare as “compassion-inducing, frustrating, oddly compelling and absurd”.
However, Higgins says the book (ghost-written by JR Moehringer, the man behind the autobiography of tennis great Andre Agassi) falls foul of the very thing it rallies against.
“Simultaneously loathing and locked into the tropes of tabloid storytelling, the style of which his ghost-written autobiography echoes,” says the Guardian’s chief culture writer.
Elsewhere, The Financial Times’ chief features writer Henry Mance wondered aloud as to why the public should read anything more on Harry, or why he should add to the coverage.
However, his “case for the defence” is that out of all the media coverage of Harry and Meghan since they stepped down from royal duty in 2020, this is the most “revelatory”.
And while The Guardian’s Higgins is somewhat critical of ghostwriter Moehringer, Mance is effusive in his praise: “In the hands of ghostwriter JR Moehringer, acclaimed for guiding Andre Agassi’s memoir Open, Harry’s story is told sensitively and at times movingly.”
In a three-out-of-five star review in The Telegraph, arts and entertainment editor Anita Singh acknowledged that most of the explosive details are already combed over due to the leak in Spain.
However, she says the “tiny details of royal life” that are left behind “can be entertaining”.
She is also full of praise for Moehringer and praised him for “making his subject seem like the sane one in the story, which is not necessarily the impression gained from Harry’s sit-down with (ITV’s) Tom Bradby this week”.
In addition to being “well-constructed and fluently written,” Singh warns that “your heart breaks for him on every page that mentions Diana”.
“Breathtakingly frank” is The Independent’s take in its four-star review, written by Lucy Pavia.
“This book doesn’t so much lift the curtain on private royal life than rip it off and shake out its contents,” she writes.
The Times’ James Marriot concurs, and writes: “In Harry’s telling the royal family at times seems like a cult.”
Marriot points to what he sees as an hypocrisy with the memoir: “Although he claims to despise the intrusions of the press, Harry craves being the centre of attention.”
Reviewers also noted some parts of the book will comes across as out of touch to the reader.
Marriot writes that “Harry endlessly complains that he’s forced to inhabit pokier bedrooms than his brother”.
“Is William aware that decades later his brother is still fuming away over who got the nicest bedroom in which palace?”, The Times’ writer also asks.
It’s a point the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins also picks up: “His observations about the darkness of the basement flat he once occupied in Kensington Palace, its windows blocked from the light by a neighbour’s 4×4, will seem insulting to those who can’t find a home, or afford to heat one.”
- Additional reporting from the Press Association.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say