Spare

I'm not usually a memoir reader, but I was also raised by someone who hate-watches anything to do with the British royal family. So I read Spare in part because my mom wants to talk about it, but partially because of my own suspicions about the royal family and the British media. On that narrow criteria, Spare met my expectations.

Spare exceeded my expectations by being a thoughtful look back by a man who's been dealing with trauma since adolescence but, perhaps because of his privileged position, wasn't given the tools to deal with it. A few years ago during one of the regular debates about The Catcher in the Rye which pop up on social media, I wondered if the book is taught less often because modern teens can't imagine a world in which a boy who punches out the windows of the family car the night his younger brother died doesn't get counseling. No one seemed to think that two young teens whose mother died publicly needed anything more than a return to their routine - no extra tenderness, no grief counseling. I'm not exactly faulting Charles for being unemotional because of the environment he was raised in, but you'd think that by 1997 someone would point out that the boys needed to at least have some sort of professional grief counseling. But no, the Stiff Upper Lip ruled the day. The first section of the book, covering his adolescence, is full of "I think this happened" and disconnected events, showing a teenager adrift. He's unable to grieve for his mother (and has locked up memories in defense) and sent to Eton despite it not being a good fit in order for the public to think he's close to his brother, which he never has been. This is where the image of him as "thick" and a screw-up starts. He's honest about drinking and smoking marijuana with his friends, but I get the impression that most of their set did that (so, likely including his brother). But he was the one who the media called "naughty."

The second section covers his transition to adulthood. He entered the army in part because there weren't many other options (the tragedy of being close in the line of succession - I get the feeling Charles would have been much better suited to teaching A-level English and running the drama club). Learning to fly helicopters gives him a purpose, and he enjoys being just another officer...until the media sells him out and he's sent home. He also mentions that he killed people because it was his job and that he's conflicted about that. 

His military career is interspersed with and followed by visits to Africa, where he became interested in conservation and met nature filmmakers who became surrogate parents, and tales of his ordinary life. His girlfriends understandably can't deal with the constant media attention and even though he's grown up with it, he can't either. Everything he does is photographed and the paparazzi go out of their way to bait him. Beyond that, once his military career was over he had little to do - even as a full time working royal, his engagements were restricted to those that didn't conflict with others. Imagine a company based entirely on appearances where all members fight with sharp elbows for the best positions and make sure the competition is iced out of anything that might raise their ratings. That's the royal family. Not the best place for a young man dealing with the fallout of active military service on top of long-untreated trauma. It's no surprise he started having panic attacks and withdrew into reruns of Friendsˆ.

Then, while scrolling through a friend's social media feed, he saw her pictures with her friend Meghan and instantly fell for her. He asked their mutual friend to connect them, started chatting, and fell madly in love as he got to know her. The media (and his older brother) portray this as a "whirlwind romance" but they dated for about a year and a half, which seems normal to me. Meghan also encouraged him to give therapy another try after a prior brief and unsuccessful attempt, and at first the family seemed to like her. The media, however likes to add racism to their hazing of new royals and in retrospect, it was a warning sign that the monarchy didn't defend her. After they got married, the couple's media coverage got worse, and Harry points out that the royal rota not only have connections to courtiers (and possibly family members) who give them juicy stories (true or not) to cover for other royals' indiscretions - or just to knock more popular firm members down a few notches. Here's where William and Kate come across particularly poorly. He comes across as a self-centered bully, and she's cold and snooty. I can understand that Meghan's touchy-feely California attitude might not be a good fit, but I also didn't want to believe the trope of Woman Always Compete With Each Other. The story of the bridesmaids' dresses and Kate's apparent snubbing of the couple makes it look like there was at least a one-sided competition along with a 35-year sibling rivalry coming to a head. We know what happened next - Harry and Meghan escaped, first to Canada and then to California as their negotiated plans were rejected and/or leaked and their security (needed in part because of the hatred stoked by the media), and the book ends with the birth of their daughter. 

So, how true is the book? Memoirs are by definition one sided, but with the Levenson Inquiry we know that the British tabloid press, which is more mainstream than the US tabloids are, uses underhanded methods to write stories which either skirt or outright ignore the truth. And prior books have said that the courtiers run the firm, not the royal family themselves. Memories may vary about details, but the bulk of the story feels true. After 35 years, he's giving his side in response to twisted media reporting and his intention appears to be to get the media to tone it down and maybe give his niece and nephew - the next generation's spares - a bit more breathing room when the photographers stop being satisfied with the frequent but highly controlled photo calls.

Educated: A Memoir

When I think of separatists, I think of people living in a cabin far from civilization.  What surprised me most about Tara Westover's upbringing was that her cabin was only 15 or so miles from town - distant to a Philadelphian like me but not far for someone in the rural parts of the Mountain West.  She grew up in a separatist family.  Her mother theoretically homeschooled her and her six older siblings but in reality kept the family financially afloat as an herbalist and midwife.  The children all worked for their father, sorting scrap metal and doing occasional construction jobs.  In their father's eyes, school was part of the government and the government was the enemy.  After all, the government had killed the Weavers, and had done so because they homeschooled their children.  Modern medicine poisoned rather than healed, and the family treated even severe injuries with herbal remedies mixed in their kitchen.  And yet, the family had contact with general society.  Tara's paternal grandparents lived in an adjoining property and they saw each other almost daily.  Her maternal grandparents lived in a nearby town, and the family also attended weekly services at the Mormon church in town.  As the children (Tara is the youngest of seven) came of age, some of them took jobs in town, and Tara even participated in musical theater productions.   With nearby family and contacts in town, I wonder how or why no one noticed what was happening on Buck's Peak.

It all seems innocent, when Grandma-over-the-hill offers to take Tara with her on her yearly snowbird trip to Arizona.  If she comes to Grandma's house by 5 am, no one will notice that Tara is missing until nightfall.  By then, she'll be in Arizona and can enroll in school.  She's tempted, but after staying up all night decides not to go.  Maybe Tara was too young at that point to see how truly difunctional her family is, or maybe it wasn't quite so bad yet.  It's probably a bit of both.  At seven, Tara's life felt normal to her because she'd never experienced anything else, and it becomes clear that Gene Westover is not so much an ideologue as a man whose severe but undiagnosed mental illness became more disruptive and destructive as time passed.

By age 10, Tara is only theoretically homeschooled.  Her mother Faye's midwifery practice fell victim to concussion-induced migraines and with the three oldest sons gone (Tony started his own trucking business and got married, Shawn ran off after a fight with his father, and Tyler unexpectedly went to college), Gene needed Tara's labor sorting steel from copper, working alongside her brothers Luke and Richard (15-year-old Audrey had found a job in town).  Tara follows suit, working as a babysitter for two families and packing nuts at a local store.  That's when she started taking piano, dance, and voice lessons, leading to a disastrous recital and her foray into musical theater.

It's during her years in community theater that we first get to know Shawn.  We see from the start that he's emotionally manipulative and explosively violent, but to Tara he's a protective older brother. Later, the family attributes his mood swings and outbursts to a head injury incurred while working on a family construction project, but we (and Tara) eventually realize that he's always been violent, perhaps having inherited a variant of the mental illness that plagues their father.  Tara's relationship with Shawn is unsettling, leaving me to wonder if she left anything unsaid.

Music also leads to Tara's unexpected entrance into the outside world.  Her brother Tyler, now a college graduate and about to start a graduate program in mechanical engineering, encourages her to apply to BYU.  They accept homeschooled students, and they're a conservative, Mormon university.  She hesitates, but he convinces her that if she majors in music, she can become a choir director in a Mormon congregation.  With a high ACT score and an application filled out by Tyler, she's accepted and enrolls.

Tara doesn't initially adjust well to outside life.  Her roommates shock her by wearing revealing clothing and grocery shopping and doing homework on Sunday.  She, in turn, appalls them wth her questionable hygiene.  She'd never heard of the Holocaust or the Civil Rights movement, and had no idea that she was supposed to buy textbooks.  Somehow, though, she manages to make it through her freshman year and eventually gets counseling from her congregation's Bishop.  Asking a professor for help in class leads to mentorship, and eventually to a program at Cambridge.  Still, Buck's Peak calls her back and she spends summers scrapping and working at the local grocery store.  Her expanding knowledge, though, eventually shows her that Shawn is dangerously violent (and also victimized Audrey and Tyler).  Things change after her father suffers severe burns in an accident.  He survives, attributing it to Faye's herbal preparations.  Suddenly, they've got a successful business and Gene's survival leads him to become almost a cult leader.  Tara's journey to be Dr. Westover isn't just a matter of being educated, but a matter of developing the perspective to see how destructive her upbringing really was.  Estranged from part of her family, close to others (including Tyler and Richard who have Ph.D.s in mechanical engineering and chemistry, respectively), and reconnected with the aunts and uncles she barely new growing up, Educated ends with the newly minted Dr. Westover reading an e-mail for her aunt who's excited that she'll see Tara again in only 12 hours.

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography is more of a rambling memoir than a traditional autobiography, and more enjoyable because of that.  A more serious autobiography would probably focus on Christie's career, but the less directed format allowed her to focus on her personal life, and particularly her childhood.  Agatha Miller was born into the last days of a world Jane Austen would recognize, where gentlemen did not earn a living despite their declining investments and a girl might be raised entirely by a nanny and never have a day of formal education and a charming ne'er do well of an older brother might find an acceptable place in the officer corps on his connections.  She looks nostalgically on those times, but as a 21st Century great-granddaughter of a woman "in service," her comments on servants (on one hand, they were professionals; on the other they knew their place and were happier because of it) strike me as a bit odd.  It was an idyllic life, until her father's death left the family in financial straights.  Even then, Agatha seems to have had a "proper" adolescence and debut, traveling to lower-cost resorts where it was possible to live on less than the income from renting out one's home.  She had a few romances before meeting Archie Christie, married and worked in a hospital dispensary during WWI, had a daughter, and began her writing career.

I wonder how hard it was for Christie to discuss her first marriage.  It felt like she was trying to be fair to Archie, but he comes across as a bit self-centered and unreliable.  They were in love, and they went on a year-long trip around the world, but there's a nagging idea that he's going to let her down.  We know that happened - he left her for Nancy Neale while Agatha was mourning her mother's death and single-handedly clearing out her family home, and that led to Agatha's famous disappearance (which she doesn't mention).  Still, I question how reliable of a narrator she is for this part of her life.

Or for any part of her life, really.  Is any memoirist, particularly one who is so vivid of a writer, giving a truly unbiased view of her life?  Another example involves her second marriage to Max Mallowan.  They met when she was invited to visit an archaeological dig; Max was expedition leader Leonard Wooley's protege.  She chronicled their friendship and then romance through a series of trips, but with a fuzzy timeline and leaves the impression that he fell in love immediately and she had no clue.  Once married to Max, she accompanied him on his archaeological digs until WWII when he entered the Army and she once again worked in a hospital dispensary.

Christie wrote her memoir between 1955 an 1965, but it essentially ends before she began writing it, and only casually discusses her career.  Except for the year following the breakup of her first marriage, she apparently found writing easy.  All she needed was a typewriter, a good table, and a few hours of privacy to produce her yearly novels, and when she wanted money for a home improvement or a new car, she'd just sit down and write a short story and send it to a magazine for publication.  She almost dismisses her prolific WWII output by saying that there wasn't much else to do - Max was overseas, her daughter was in Wales, her friends were scattered, and there wasn't much nightlife - and that she wrote two books simultaneously so if she became blocked on one, she could work on the other.  I'd like to read a straight biography of Agatha Christie, particularly one that analyzed her professional life  I don't think, though, that such a book, no matter how informative, would be quite as much fun as her own memoir.

Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

Imagine you move into a new neighborhood, and the woman next door looks familiar - very familiar, but you can't place her.  A few weeks later, you're chatting on the doorstep and she invites you in for coffee.  Walking through the house, you see a piece of memorabilia that tells you where you know her from - 35 years ago, she spent a few years as the star of a long-running TV show.  You ask, and she admits that yes, she was an actress, and with some prompting she tells you about her career.

She tells you about growing up in Liverpool, taking drama classes as a child, and joining the National Youth Theatre (where her classmates included Helen Mirren and Diana Quick).  Back in Liverpool, she joined a repertory theater where a cast mate made her giggle when she was playing a corpse - they've been happily married for decades now, a truly devoted couple.  Opportunity took them to London and fate cast her in a now-iconic role.  Then?   Well, through a combination of typecasting, the relatively low status of her show's genre, and (she admits) tactical errors on her part, her career sort of fades away.  She goes to conventions devoted to her old show, has a daughter, and essentially retires around 40.

That's how Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography feels - like a conversation with a very nice lady who happened to be very famous for a few years and while she enjoyed it, has no need to dwell on it.  It's full of warm memories of friends and co-workers (sometimes bittersweet memories of those who have died), descriptions of the mid-70s working conditions at the BBC (let's just say that the actors are not quite as nostalgic about the cardboard-set era as I am), and a few mildly cautionary tales about missed opportunities.  She drops several names - famous, not-so-famous, and hey-it's-that-guy - and usually has nice things to say (although Jon Pertwee still comes off as a complete jerk on occasion).  The overall effect is, well, a pleasant conversation with someone who's had some interesting experiences.

Ms. Sladen's memoir doesn't end with that conversation.  Russell T. Davies brought her, and Sarah Jane Smith, back to Doctor Who in 2005, and then gave Sarah (and Lis) her own spin-off show, making her more famous in her 60s than she had been in her 30s.  Sadly, there will be no follow-up volume, because Ms. Sladen died at age 65, shortly after sending the manuscript to the publisher.