Spare

Ah, welcome back. In our previous look at some of the major books of the year, I highlighted titles that went on to be acclaimed bestsellers and the most talked-about volumes of the past twelve months, as well — inevitably — as a few that failed to live up to the high expectations that we’d placed upon them. It is interesting that, just as Prince Harry’s Spare was indeed the most discussed book of last year, another hotly tipped memoir is undoubtedly the major release of 2024.

By the time you read this piece, Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare will have been published in the United States. The question of whether it’s any good will be decided swiftly by the newspaper and online literary critics, but we in the monthly magazine trade have, alas, been denied the opportunity to see it before our publication deadlines. Under normal circumstances, this would bode very badly indeed. As with films that are not screened for critics beforehand — “because we want the audience to discover the magic for themselves” — books that have very tight publication schedules and are embargoed to the hilt are usually seen as flops-in-prospect.

After a fair-to-middling 2022, it’s not unreasonable to hope that 2023 will see several stars burn brightly in the literary firmament. Whether what promises to be the most talked-about book of the year, Prince Harry’s Spare (Random House, January), is included in this number remains to be seen. On the plus side, the prince has the estimable J.R. Moehringer as his ghostwriter; on the negative side is the fact that his every public appearance over the past few years has been so combative that we might expect little more than a 416-page exercise in score-settling. More reliable pleasures await. Pamela Anderson’s memoir Love, Pamela (HarperCollins, January) should be a revelatory and fascinating dive beyond the usual bimbo clichés.

Cockburn has a few vacations coming up in 2023, so is on the hunt for some new light reading material. Thank God that Prince Harry has announced that his long-awaited memoir, Spare, will hit shelves globally on January 10. The cover features a close-up of the man fifth in line to the British throne, staring down the barrel of the camera, blue eyes glinting, beard tidily trimmed. His expression says, "this is my story." Publisher Penguin Random House said in a press release: “Spare takes readers immediately back to 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.