'Spare' by Prince Harry

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.

For Harry, this is that story at last.

MY THOUGHTS:

 I was surprised it was only a two-month wait for 'Spare' to arrive at my local library for me. I'd expected far longer as this is undoubtedly the bestselling non-fiction title of 2023. There's a fast turnover, as I needed to get stuck straight into it, to return within two weeks. It took every day of that fortnight, since it's quite a chunky book with lots to take in.

Anyway, since the whole world has been shamelessly gawking and commenting about Prince Harry's life, I understand why he chooses to use the platform he never asked for to set the record straight. He says, 'I savoured normality, wallowed in it. For the first time I was just a name. Is this what other people feel like every day?' 

Harry first reveals himself as that 12-year-old boy who was denied the right to process his intense and sudden grief privately. 'I reached for my father's hand and then cursed myself because that gesture set off an explosion of clicks.' His mother's tragic and untimely death is the frame on which many of Harry's subsequent reminiscences hang. His experience, especially in those first few years after Diana's death, suggests that grief is a personality changer. After that pivotal event in his life, he couldn't sit still in a contemplative frame of mind or attempt to quietly read a book, because those moments were when the grief gremlins attacked him. We'll never know if he would have faced the world with a more peaceful mindset had she lived, for that trajectory was closed for poor Harry. It makes very poignant reading, especially whenever he refers to Diana's 'disappearance' rather than her death. He admits that a certain element of denial helped see him through, whether or not others may have considered it healthy. 

Nobody can dodge the controversial 'Spare' issue after which he named his book. Okay, as a fellow youngest sibling, I get where Harry is coming from. Being born last is in itself a trial. You grow up feeling marginalised and often find yourself a source of jest while the others watch you process things they've had several extra years to get a handle on. That all comes as part of the territory with Harry too, but with the additional gripe of feeling that who he was (the Spare) is a by-product of who he wasn't (the Heir). It's not a simple matter of being miffed because William had a bigger bedroom in the palace but a fact of life that cuts at his whole personhood. Other reviewers have scoffed at Harry's feelings, but whether or not we consider him a bellyacher, they are his feelings. 

For the bulk of his book, I greatly admire Harry. We have no idea how it must feel to be ever on your guard, second-guessing how every innocent gaffe might be re-shaped by the predatory 'paps' to present to the world. We know nothing of the 'fancy captivity' of a lifetime spent like this. Harry does his best to explain the bitter irony that's so galling to him; that the same unscrupulous vultures who twist the minutiae of his own life fail to keep the world informed about far more vital issues we all should know.

The parts other people have cherry picked were over-stated, as I'd expected. The flurry about the incident where he loses his virginity aged 17 is over in a passing sentence without any name mentioned. Come on folk, it isn't even an incident. The 'frostbitten todger' is hilarious, although admittedly I'll probably think of it whenever photos of William and Kate's wedding pop up, since that's when Harry suffered the painful ordeal. And as for mentioning his 25 kills in his military career, in Harry's own words, 'We were in a war, what did they think I was doing, selling magazine subscriptions?' Some people have mentioned possible repercussions on Archie, Lilibet and other children of Harry's down the track, but isn't the highly publicised fact that he was fighting in Afghanistan likely to call for care and discretion anyway? It's sad to think that he's being vilified for what is arguably a most sacrificial period of his life.  

I found Harry to be refreshingly candid and vulnerable in his approach. He isn't a bit superior or self-obsessed. On the contrary, he admits to feeling way out of his depth from as far back as his Eton schooldays and confesses non-stop, internal self-criticism. He's frequently embarrassed by his titles, as he considers them so unearned. Harry has a compassionate heart for wounded war-heroes and sufferers of panic attacks and other mental health issues, as he's sadly been there. He's a hard-worker, an empathetic sounding board, a brave and skillful pilot and an admirable ambassador for disabled athletes. He's also a sensitive and loving husband and father, and has now proven himself to be a fascinating, erudite author too. (Okay, I know a lot of the polish comes from Harry's ghost writer, J.R. Moehringer, who deserves kudos for helping Harry discover his own compelling voice.) 

It would have been a 5 star read for me, but I'm dropping one because of Harry's candid revelations about his brother, who he always calls 'Willy.' Heartfelt as they are, I flinched several times while reading them. I feel 'Harold' has crossed a line, placing 'Willy' in an awkward, no-win situation. Responding in kind, with a 'just for the record...' style approach is not an option for the future monarch, without using the sort of public pettiness his family has always stood above. Yet by keeping silent, William is consenting to being regarded by many as the petty prat who threw a hissy fit when his brother was allowed to retain his beard for his own wedding, to mention just one example. It seems the Spare wields a sort of freedom after all, in his regretful tell-all which the Heir could never get away with. 

I suspect what we get between the brothers is terribly biased and one-sided, as conflicts always are. Harry's side is clear and sincere as far as he can tell, yet Willy's side is bound to be completely different and equally compelling from his own point of view. The assumptions Harry makes, although completely true in his own eyes, may be far from the truth as his brother sees it. (For example, Harry assumes William is responding to the press when he calls Meghan rude and abrasive, but who's to say William doesn't feel himself to be perfectly justified and speaking from personal experience? The same event can be recounted by different people in ways impossible to reconcile. In Harry and William's case, they may both be real-life unreliable narrators.) 

Harry arguably leaves William no other recourse than to resort to their Eton schooldays and pretend he doesn't know him. Although this book, Spare is the result of hours of painstaking work, there's a thoughtless, reactive vibe about some of it, particularly so many of the parts concerning William. 

It's tragic to think this memoir might spell the end of the brothers' relationship. 'No one but Willy understood what it was like to live in this surreal fishbowl in which normal events were treated as abnormal and the abnormal was routinely normalised.' I'll bet if William were free to write his own memoir, it would be even more scorching in many ways, since the Heir surely bears burdens the Spare happily missed out on. 

One of the most repeated and memorable quotes is King Charles', 'Don't read the news stories, darling boy.' That's Charles' default approach, and I tend to wonder if his darling boy's book is now up high among the literature he refuses to read. (I think our king comes across quite sympathetically for most of the book, except for him and Camilla making deals with the media to twist certain matters in exchange for portraying them favourably.) 

Whew, my husband and kids are glad 'Spare' has now gone back to the library, as I'll stop talking to them about all this stuff. But I tend to regard this book as a generous revelation into a slice of history which anyone who keeps an eye on the Royals shouldn't miss. I'm sure it'll be up among my top 10 reads of the year. It's fantastically written and there's more I haven't even begun to discuss, including his relationship with other royals such as his grandparents (I would've liked to see more Prince Philip in these pages), his great Aunt Margaret (Aunt Margo), the Queen Mother (Gam Gam) and his Uncle Andrew, not to mention Meghan, the love of his life. But this review is long enough so I won't even go there.  

Think of me when we're all hunkering down watching Charles' coronation. 

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'Miss Garnet's Angel' by Salley Vickers

Stories magically unfold within this novel’s irresistible tale of Miss Julia Garnet, a schoolteacher who decides, after the death of her longtime friend Harriet, to take an apartment for six months in Venice. Soon overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the city and its magnificent art, Miss Garnet’s English reserve begins to melt away. For the first time in her life she falls in love—with an art dealer named Carlo—and her once ordinary world is further transformed by a beautiful Italian boy, Nicco, and an enigmatic pair of twins engaged in restoring the fourteenth-century Chapel-of-the-Plague. Most affecting to Julia, though, is her discovery in a local church of panels depicting the ancient tale of Tobias and the Angel. As Julia unravels the story of Tobias’s redemption, she too strives to recover losses—not just her own but also the priceless painting of an angel that goes mysteriously missing from the Chapel along with one of the twins restoring it. His name is Toby. And Miss Garnet herself may prove to be an angel, but nowhere in this haunting, beautifully textured and multilayered novel is anything quite what it appears to be.

MY THOUGHTS:

I made a new year's resolution to read some of the books of  the Apocrypha, because I'm unfamiliar with them, so I made a start with the strange and bizarre book of Tobit. In a nutshell, a righteous old man turns blind when sparrows poop in his eyes, then sends his son on a long journey to acquire some family funds they're entitled to. The Angel Raphael accompanies the boy on his travels, incognito. In the process, young Tobias catches a fish with astoundingly specific healing properties and acquires a beautiful wife with a history of accidental husband slaying. That unusual tale led me to this novel, because it's been on my shelf for a while and I knew it draws greatly from the old story. 

Miss Julia Garnet is a pedantic retired school teacher with Marxist ideals. After the sudden death of her housemate Harriet, she decides to take a six-month holiday alone in Venice. Since she's not the sort of person who appreciates the opulent, iconic character of the Catholic church tradition it seems an odd choice of destination. Yet Venice rubs off on Julia, along with the hunch that there may, after all, be more depth to the world than the ho-hum, everyday sliver of life she's used to. The Apocryphal story of Tobias and the angel comes to her attention through artwork everywhere, and then to Miss Garnet's surprise, she finds herself caught up in an unfolding, modern counterpart of that ancient story.

Even though the premise sounded so ambitious and appealing, I found the modern parallel way too heavy handed and unsubtle. It is clear who each new character is meant to represent, and Vickers had to tweak her plot in all sorts of far-fetched tangents to pull off her analogy. What's more, Julia Garnet struck me as a tedious, woeful protagonist whose head space I kept wanting out of. She seems to be forever bumping into things and hurting herself, or second-guessing others in her dithery efforts to gauge their intentions towards her. 

My favourite parts of the novel by far were the retellings straight from the Book of Tobit itself. Salley Vickers assumes the voices of  the dad Tobit and son Tobias brilliantly, to the extent that I grumbled whenever we were back with Julia again, even though she's the main character. Yet if I hadn't read the book of Tobit just before reading this novel, they would've gone over my head. 

Even here, I would've loved more about the awkward position of poor Tobias, the boy who'd been coerced to get betrothed to a girl whose inner demon had murdered seven new husbands on their wedding night as they attempted to consummate the marriage. How would you feel knowing you stood a fair chance of being number eight? Maybe the black humour of the original tale is unintentional, but I love how his new father-in-law admits he'd been preparing a spot for him in the family crypt as Tobias headed to Sarah's bedroom, basically admitting, 'I thought you were a goner, mate.' 

At one point, Salley Vickers has Tobit say, 'I've come to see that bungling is what all of us do. Perhaps bungling is what we are here for.' That might be my best takeaway, since I feel she's sort of bungled her handling of the Book of Tobit, which doesn't lend itself easily to modern knock-offs. For example, the modern counterparts of Toby and Sarah are a young pair of supposed twins restoring an ancient Venetian church. That in itself is a highly unlikely stretch of credibility. 

Julia Garnet undoubtedly softens and mellows as a character, yet all through she seems to be the same finicky spinster who insists on having tradesmen address her as, 'Miss' rather than 'Mrs' rather than just letting it pass. Still, I can't deny Vickers gave it a good try, resulting in something almost as bizarre as the original. I remained just curious enough to keep turning pages to find out how this modern mess of an adaptation would turn out. 

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'Boy' and 'Going Solo' by Roald Dahl

This year is one for reading off my shelves. I've resolved to buy no more books until our financial pinch has eased off. Because Roald Dahl has been in the media lately, regarding sensitivity editors sensoring his books, his two memoirs of his early life caught my eye. My elder son recommended Boy years ago when he was just 10 or 11 years old. I'm finally taking it up way down the track, since that son is now 28. But better late than never. 

Boy

When Roald Dahl's mother died in 1967, he discovered she'd kept all the 600+ letters he'd ever written her from the time he was a little boy at boarding school. That unexpected gift provided him with great fodder to begin the task of writing his two-part memoir. This first part, 'Boy' was first published in 1984 when Dahl was 68. 

Being born in 1916 and raised in the harshness of the 20th century shaped him into the humorous writer we know so well. He'd observe the gross unfairness of authority figures, and being restricted from any form of come-back, he'd lampoon them instead, with his carefully crafted caricatures. 

Brutal school canings take up a fair amount of space, which Dahl justifies by describing the traumatic mark they left on their impressionable minds, even more so than their burning bottoms. I now suspect many British gentlemen from 1940 onwards must've walked around with permanently scarred buttocks. (Roald says, 'Even today when I have to sit for any length of time on a hard bench or chair, I begin to feel my heart beating along the old lines that the cane made on my bottom some 55 years ago.') It's appalling and atrocious, but Roald, or rather 'Boy' gets the last word. 

He spills the beans on one cruel and dour headmaster of Repton School who became Archbishop of Canterbury and officiated at Queen Elizabeth's coronation. Even though Dahl doesn't mention Geoffrey Fisher by name, a quick google leaves readers in no doubt who he was talking about. The Dahl family's local doctor justifies hated boarding school by saying, 'Life is tough, and the sooner you learn to cope with it, the better for you.' Some may argue our 21st century pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, with students' paths being padded to a detrimental effect for the real world beyond. But after reading some of Roald's harrowing experiences, I can see why that was deemed necessary. Oh man!    

Reading between the lines, I get the impression Roald was a bit of a rascal. Not a vicious, bullying one, but a mischievous, pushing-the-envelope type of imp. He was the brains behind a couple of hilarious practical jokes I won't spoil for you. (The chapter entitled Goat Tobacco really tickles my fancy.) The fact that some of Roald's schoolmasters had it in for him, 'for no apparent reason' is suggestive. When Dahl became captain of his school sports team, they refused to make him a prefect, although other school captains all automatically became prefects. It makes me suspect a cheeky demeanour sparkling through the outward conformity. And I say all power to him, for maintaining his inner comic throughout years of put-downs and beatings. 

We learn many other interesting details about living in the early 20th century. Two half hour lessons were considered sufficient in 1925 for Dahl's older half-sister to decide she was ready to drive the family car. Tests to earn your license were way in the future. 'You were your own judge of competence,' Roald says. And he nearly had his nose knocked off by his sister's bad and reckless driving. 

'My nose had been cut almost clean off my face as I went through the rear windscreen and now it was hanging on only by a small thread of skin.'

He describes how Dr. Dunbar, their local GP, taped his nose in place, then sewed it back on in a home operation of the Dahls' nursery table. Perhaps there was a little poetic license. Are we really to believe that this humble medical man from the mid-1920s pulled off a job worthy of a 21st century plastic surgeon? 

Kudos to Roald's plucky widowed mother Sofie too. She elected to stay back in England after her husband's death, with her two step kids and four of her own, rather than return to her family in Norway. It was purely to honour his wishes, as Harald Dahl thought British schools were the best the world had to offer, and wanted his children educated there. His son didn't agree with him about the sterling character of British schools, and I'm willing to accept Roald's opinion as the more accurate one, since he formed it from bitter experience.       

Overall, Dahl makes seemingly chance and random recollections both meaningful and entertaining. That's something I guess requires years of retrospective thinking backwards to pull off. Perhaps that's partly why some studies suggest seniors are happier people than their more youthful counterparts. 

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Going Solo

This second memoir tackles a dramatic slab of Dahl's early twenties. When he leaves school, he works with the Shell Company, where he's stationed in deepest, darkest Africa. Home base is the tiny town of Dar Es Salaam, which teems with colourful, lethal jungle animals. There are also black and green mambas, both equally deadly. 

Then suddenly the danger factor of Roald's life revs up a hundredfold. War breaks out when he's 23, and he's thrown straight in the deep end, assigned the formidable task of stopping resident Germans swarming out of town to send them to prison camp. Next, Dahl enlists for training to be a fighter pilot, although at 6 feet 6 inches tall, he can barely squeeze his lanky frame into the tiny cockpits.

One incident retells a serious accident in which Dahl was victim of a logistical cock-up. He was following wrong directions given by a superior officer in total good faith. The outcome is a forced crash landing where his head is thrown forward on collision causing a fractured skull, temporary blindness and totally compressed nose.

Whoa, Roald's nose cops another blow!! (See the childhood incident above in Boy, where it was almost severed.) 

This time, at least, a qualified field plastic surgeon is on hand to operate, although ineffective anesthesia makes it a bit scary. Back on his feet, Dahl is off again, with further flying adventures taking him to Greece and Palestine. 

I'm sure many modern day gamers like my sons might relate to his descriptions of flying his planes and engaging in battle, because the panels and controls sound quite rudimentary by today's standards. Thank heavens the stakes for our millennial boys are so much lower. Dahl reveals many of the campaigns he's involved in as panicked, reactive, spur-of-the-moment craziness and often expresses surprise that he managed to survive.  

(Think of all those zany kids' classics of his never having been written! The world must have missed a wealth of creative genius that was never delivered by young men with great potential, whose lives were cut far too short. War takes a horrific toll which we'll never realise in our lifetime.)

Of course, it wouldn't be a Roald Dahl book without some moments of light relief. He still takes every opportunity to satirize folk, including U.N. Savory, the guy with his collection of different length wigs. Other moments are touching, such as his encounter with a community of Jewish refugees he had no idea was being persecuted. That part of Hitler's regime hadn't made it to the news Dahl and his pilot friends were hearing. 

I don't usually enjoy war stories or detailed description of combat, but this one drew me in. It's well told in his up-close-and-personal style. I wish there'd been more memoirs.

The photo above was taken in June 1941, a few months after that second serious accident to his nose. Hats off to the doctors of the day, who obviously did excellent patchwork in both cases, as he was clearly pretty handsome. 

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