Prince Harry’s memoir Spare has broken the Guinness World Record for fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time.
The controversial tell-all book, which revealed intimate details about Harry’s life and the British royal family, sold 1.43 million copies on its first day.
What were the critics’ opinions on Spare?
- “Spare is an unprecedented exposure of the Royal Family from the most deeply embedded of informants.” — The New Yorker
- “In spite of his blind spots, Harry is so candid about so much, and that makes Spare an incomparably bonkers read. Here is a prince in my ear, telling me about the shopping bag full of weed he smoked and peeing his pants on a sailboat and applying Elizabeth Arden face cream to his penis… Royal life looks worse, but also so much weirder, than we could have known.” — The Cut
- “In places it feels like the longest angry drunk text ever sent.” — The BBC
- “Why is Harry telling us these things? It is brave, yes, but also so shamelessly unvarnished it feels reckless — not just to his family or the institution of the monarchy but to himself.”– New Statesman
- “Harry is so petulant: a man who thinks nothing, even now, of complaining about the bedroom he was allotted for his summer hols in Granny’s castle. With every page, his California makeover grows less convincing.” — The Guardian
- “The brand he [Harry] and Meghan have so carefully nurtured is entirely dependent on the brand they so publicly cast off. With each morsel of palace scandal they lob into the news cycle, they feed the beast they deplore, and it will never end, and, for the Windsors’ sakes, can never end because that would mean our interest in them has run dry. – The Washington Post
“You close the book with the queasy sense that in reading it, you’ve been prying into something deathly private, that probably this book should not exist at all.” — Vox
What’s next?: Harry and his wife Meghan Markle reportedly have a four-book deal with publisher Penguin Random House. There are rumors that Markle’s memoir might be published next: she allegedly kept a journal during her time in the royal family.
Image credits: Header by Phillip Pessar, CC by 2.0
