I don’t know what I was expecting from this memoir. Actually, I do. I expected Harry to tell his story. I expected him to set the record straight. I expected details of his life and relationships that we had never heard before, some of them potentially scandalous. What I got instead was one of the most artfully crafted and evocative accounts of a life that I have read, or heard, since Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” and arguably more far reaching and impactful. I actually read along in hard copy while listening to the narration in accompaniment, which I highly recommend. One thing I did not expect was Harry’s ability to create such a visceral sense of time and place. His descriptions, particularly of his trips to Africa, the Poles, Afghan deserts, anywhere in nature were truly stunning, practically reverential. I could picture it as if standing at a window, overlooking the scenes he described. When dealing with the press, their coverage of his life, his relationships and more, Harry was unflinching and uncompromising in his evaluation of their practices, the stories and their ‘sources’. He addressed each one with the same honesty and no-holds-barred approached they have so often employed on him. Even segments that some readers may describe as “cringey” or “oversharing”, to me, seemed like nothing more than Harry boldly commenting on the many aspects of his life that strangers have, for many years, made themselves far too comfortable exploring. When dealing with his relationships, particularly with past girlfriends and most importantly, his family. Harry, bared his soul. He shared his memories, both painful and joyous, sometimes even outing himself as an unreliable narrator by claiming a memory’s rootedness in impression, feeling or even things learned later in life over hard, provable, in-the-moment fact. But where he has certainty, in the things that he knows that he knows, Harry handles his story and the people in it with equal measures of unaugmented truth and impressive grace. Harry’s descriptions of Meghan, his passages describing the births of his children, the lives they tried to build, and rebuild, are soft, beautiful and heartbreaking. I was a fan before, of both him and Meghan separately (having been put on to Suits many years ago as a law student) and a supporter of the Sussexes since the first rumors of them started circulating; no hiding that. But even as someone who thought I had a relatively decent idea of their character and their struggles, I was floored by what I’d read. I was moved by their commitment to each other and to “doing good” in the world and ultimately left with the solid impression that we, none of us, ever really knew Harry (not even those who’d call themselves the most devoted Royal watchers), and even after this book, which is somehow as restrained as it is transparent, we probably still entirely don’t, and that’s ok.