I once read that there was a man at Buckingham Palace whose profession was that of widen the slippers of the late Queen Elizabeth, so that her majesty’s feet would be at ease once tucked into the warmth. He came back to me while I was reading Prince Harry’s new book, just released and already a cult. Evidently there was a budget in the palace for someone who thought about slippers, but not even a shadow of child family therapists. Already on page 1 you get a lump as big as the Commonwealth: the dedication to the mother and Faulkner’s exergue which says that the past never passes, and then that title, Spare, which means spare wheel, the second, in the Italian translation softened in «the minor». We haven’t even started and already abandonment syndrome and a sense of inferiority appear between the lines. Let’s go ahead and get ready, five hundred and thirty-five pages await us ghostwritten from the tried and tested JR Moheringer, Pulitzer prize and extraordinary cantor, in the masterpiece book Open, of the deeds of André Agassi, another world icon with unresolved parenting issues. In the first half of the book Harry is above all else Diana’s sonthe child traumatized by the death of his mother, custodian of beauty, truth, pain and extreme sacrifice in the shadow (shelter and darkness) of a crown with which his brother William and he grew up, albeit with different characters and roles: future king, heir to the throne calm and controlled one, rebel reserve, splinter mad the other.
In the first three hundred very flowing pages, as in a sort of curriculum vitae that no one has ever asked forHarry rattles off childhood suffering, grievous shortcomings, the many falls, the commitment to find his way in the world, with volunteering and work in Africa, and with the army in the dangerous campaigns in Afghanistan, yet make no mistake, do not it is a biography and not even a Bildungsroman. It’s a story of good guys and bad guys. Predictably, he is the good guy, while, again no surprise, in the role of the bad guy alternately and increasingly arm in arm, the British press, guilty of brutally killing his mother that August night in Paris in the ravenous search for half a scoop , and the royal family, who by offering favor and complicity to those same journalists, never really took a position of denouncing the system. Imagine the slightly modified fairy tale, the child shouting that the king is naked and everything continues as if nothing had happened: understandably he has accumulated a bit of frustration.
In the following two hundred and fifty very light pages, like in a kind of carabinieri report that we all already know by heart, Harry instead recounts his present, his life now, which seems to make sense only since his wife Meghan became part of it, don’t make me waste useless characters in presentations, you know who it is. Even the story is well known, but he wants to tell us all the same: the press that again rages, opposes, concentrates in the narration of her and of this whole union the morbidity, the falsehoods, the rotten racism, the misogyny of which he is capable, bringing the couple to the last resort, i.e. abandoning the kingdom, divorcing the crown, retiring to private life. Now the question is all here, we have never heard of these two so much since they claimed to want to escape the spotlight, it is a continuous declaration, giving their own version, it is all an interview, a “Now let’s talk” , including this last effort (his? ours?). Looking at it with the tired eye of someone who has read the whole book in one day but still after twelve years of analysis to resolve their own dramas with the family, my only review is the following: This is a book about self-sabotage and a call for help at the same time.
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Harry after experiencing the greatest trauma, the loss of his mother and in that violent and unfair way, instead of hiding safely in an atoll previously colonized by his ancestors if necessary and living happily, throws himself back to the wild beasts , as if he had to sacrifice even his own life to be able to say «Do you see? Now is it clear how much harm they can do?”. The child that no one listened to when he cried, because as he says in the book the motto at the palace is never complain, never explain, is shouting fire as an adult, and it doesn’t matter if it was him who delivered the matches to the tabloids. And to think that she has been trying hard since she was a teenager: drugs, alcohol, stunts, the masquerade as a Nazi general, her ass in the wind in Las Vegas, and then the supreme shame, a black American, emancipated feminist, actress in Hollywood, little fascinated by princely atmospheres. He dug his own grave, sat on the river bank waiting for his own dead body to pass by just to count how many paparazzi would photograph the scene. It doesn’t matter if you earn money and land with the book or with the ones hosted by Oprahwith the documentary on Netflix or I don’t know what devilry it will take to process this blessed mourning again, for anyone who has done half a session of analysis, empathy is immediate, with related suspension of judgement. That’s how it went Harry, it’s life, please dedicate yourself to your children and spare them at least, for you and for you, but also for us, set a boundary, establish a limit beyond which this story will no longer have a reason to be blurt out . I throw it there, before the sticker album, before the theme park, before the musical.
Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
