The Spare or In the Shadow

By Mónica Hernández Mosiño

I fell for it, I confess. I bought the book in pre-sale and it arrived, punctually, on the day of the launch. I refused for days to give my money to someone who I considered beforehand, wayward, irresponsible and unworthy of my pesos, in exchange for getting into his head and prying into the private life of someone who neither suits me nor suits me. I got Harry Windsor's book, or whatever you want to call it. I consoled myself with having paid the cheapest of the options available. I read it in two days because there is nothing profound, let alone something that challenges one to think. It's like reading an uninterrupted series of tabloid notes, so, light, with little form and no substance.

More confessions: it was exactly what I expected, given that I had not been unaware of the thousands of comments, videos and accusations, especially those that occurred as a result of anticipated "leaks", most likely intentional, as well as the "sale by mistake" in some bookstore in Spain. No, I did not watch the so-called series, or docuseries or reality series or whatever they have pretended to be. I will not watch it. I had enough with the snippets of interviews promoting the book and the 416 pages (in English, 560 in Spanish because, as you know, Spanish is a language richer in words).

Chisme? yes, I confess. And morbid. A lot of morbidity. I'm not a monarchist but I understand the social function of such an ancient monarchy in a country as deeply rooted in tradition as the United Kingdom. A family that can trace its ancestors back to the ninth century attracts all my attention, to me, who only have the first name of only one of my eight possible great-great-grandmothers and I don't have the full surnames of my great-grandfathers either (things of wars).

With so much "pedigree", one would expect to find a certain dignity in people who have striven for centuries to maintain it, even if hidden behind the walls of their palaces. But no. Nothing. And that I have seen the series "The Crown" and I knew about the ignorance of these people, turned into characters, but I was not ready to get bored as I did reading the book. What does it leave me? I learned that sibling envy and sibling rivalry is real (wow! Not that I didn't know that since I was a year and months old and my sister was born), that mental illness exists and that habitual drug use eats away at the brain. Ah! And that there are people who go through life demanding respect without offering it to others (just as many non-adult adults cling to privilege without the prior payment of the responsibilities that come with it). Quite a lesson in wisdom.

Yes, the writer (everyone knows that a writer was used -ghost writer in English) is a person who arouses sympathy for his unhappy childhood (from which he was stampeded at the age of twelve with the very public death of his mother), but no sympathy for the decisions he has made as an adult. Another case of a man with one (or several) mental illnesses, to which he has self-prescribed drugs of all kinds, mixed with alcohol. A victim who is self-pitying himself in search of culprits for what has happened to him in life. Someone who does not accept having made mistakes in his life... If you want to read it, go ahead. It leaves you with the aftertaste of being paid loads of dollars to speak ill of others, perhaps not realizing that in doing so, he speaks worse of himself.

And back to the ghostwriter. John Joseph Moeringher, who only appears in the acknowledgments, was the one who most caught my attention (his pen name is J.R. Moeringher, for some curious and extraneous reason). He is a 58-year-old novelist, journalist and writer, winner of the Livingston Prize in 1997 (he was 33!), the prestigious Pulitzer in 2000, and in 2001, the Nieman Fellowship. He collaborated with the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Author of a sort of biography called The Tender Bar (or the Bar of Great Hopes), which quickly became a movie script and was directed by none other than George Clooney. It passed without much fanfare, but the book is good and fun. I mean, John Joseph knows how to write and does it very well. Andre Agassi hired him to write his memoirs and they are much better than those of a resentful and envious prince. Also Phil Knight's, who you may not know, but is the founder of Nike, another "autobiography" that maybe, just maybe, will be more interesting than the book I just finished.

I am a compulsive reader and could not pass up a book on sale (or so the pre-sale said). I'm left with that you have to read to form an opinion, maybe to share it.

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