MixedThe San Francisco ChronicleIt’s not just the unrelenting stories of familial coldness or the cruelty of inherited fame in Spare that made me think of Crawford. It’s that even 45 years after the publication of her book, her allegations of abuse at the hands of her famous mother remain what define her in popular culture ... But Spare — both the term and the book — does not have to be what defines Prince Harry ... It’s a story of extremes: enormous privilege tied to celebrity that makes privacy almost impossible; deep love tied to fears of deep loss; and most of all, a sense of never being enough, and never quite fitting into the family and role he was assigned ... Spare... often had me feeling sympathy for the prince. But more frequently, I found myself cringing ... More disturbing is the way he bemoans the invasive nature of the British media, their hacking of phones, their lies, and then, in the next sentences, offers private details about his own family. For someone who hates the tabloid press, he does a good job of writing like one of its ranks, down to criticizing his brother’s receding hairline ... After finishing Spare, my question is: Now that you’ve told your story (repeatedly), who do you want to be, Prince Harry? Will you become the champion for the planet and disabled veterans? Will you finally have a private life now that there’s nothing left to disclose? Or will you find yourself unable to move on from the trauma of the House of Windsor and, like Christina Crawford, end up peddling ever-newer editions of your memoir until the family revelations are finally depleted?
