Spare

Spare is Prince Harry's 2023 memoir, the fastest-selling non-fiction book in English-language publishing history (1.4 million copies in its first day in English alone) and the canonical contemporary royal memoir. The structural premise is the title - the heir-and-the-spare nineteenth-century British monarchical phrase that Harry was reminded of from childhood. The book runs across approximately four decades: the 1997 death of his mother Diana when Harry was twelve, his 1998-2003 Eton schooling, his 2005-2015 British Army career (including two combat tours in Afghanistan, the second of which involved his service as an Apache helicopter gunner), his 2016 meeting with Meghan Markle, the 2018 wedding, the 2020 'Megxit' decision to step back from senior royal duties, and the 2020 relocation to California.

Harry's structural method is the patient close-third-person memoir voice (the book was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist who also ghostwrote Andre Agassi's Open) across the chronological arc. The Afghanistan combat-tour chapters are some of the most carefully written contemporary military memoir prose by a member of the British royal family in living memory. The chapters about the institutional relationship between the Sussex household and Buckingham Palace (the briefings against Meghan, the disagreements with William, the legal action against the tabloid press) are the structural emotional center of the book and the part that produced the contemporary royal-discourse storm around publication. The 2020 California chapters earn the structural payoff the rest of the memoir has been preparing.

Recommended for readers of contemporary memoir, for the broader contemporary royal-discourse audience, and as the canonical contemporary royal memoir in English. Compare to Andre Agassi's Open (also Moehringer-ghostwritten), Michelle Obama's Becoming, and Trevor Noah's Born a Crime on the broader contemporary celebrity-and-political-memoir shelf. The Prince Harry audiobook (author-narrated) is the definitive audio production. Four solid stars.