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- The Devil Wears Prada
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- Author: Lauren Weisberger
- Reviewer: Sonali T. Sikchi
- Publisher: Doubleday (2003)
- ISBN: 038550926X
- Rating: * * Quills
- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/038550926X/scriquil
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- With a killer title and a stint on her résumé as an assistant to Anna Wintour, the powerful editor of Vogue magazine, Lauren Weisberger brings us a fictitious tale of a young college graduate in her early twenties who goes to work for Miranda Priestly, the all-powerful editor of Runway, the ultimate magazine of the fashion industry. As one of two personal assistants to Miranda — "a job a million girls will die for" — Andrea Sachs's entire life is mercilessly dominated by the incessant demands of her inhuman boss. Miranda's behavior is so insanely over-the-top that it's a gas to see what she'll do next.
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- Weisberger's verve for humor and dialogue keep the story of the nightmarish job in a light vein. For instance, when Miranda goes to Paris for the collections, Andrea receives a call back at the New York office (where, incidentally, she's not allowed to leave her desk to eat or go to the bathroom lest her boss should call). Miranda shrills over the line, "I am standing in the pouring rain on the rue de Rivoli, and my driver has vanished. Vanished! Find him immediately!"
Andrea's life is a nonstop litany of such cryptic requirements by Miranda, interspersed with outward disdain and inner rhapsodies over Jimmy Choos, Prada and Versace.
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- The thin plot reveals characters who are flat and shallow. What remains unclear is why Andrea thinks that, despite having no writing credentials, she can land her the dream position as a writer for The New Yorker by becoming a personal slave of a fashion editor, no matter how influential that editor might be. What is also unexplained is why for the majority of the book, she feels justified in being a spineless doormat and ditching her loyal friend and boyfriend, so that she may have a stab at that job. Of course, tritely, in the end she does the right thing and ditches the boss and returns to the bosom of her family and friends.
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- If you read the first chapter, then you know the rest of the book. What is essentially a short story has been made into a book, with all the filler pages filled with hilarious and outlandish tales of her evil boss, the skinny and chic staff in their expensive brand-name outfits, the fashion editors who double as make-up artists, the $200 Hermès scarves that are treated as disposable tissues and so on. The hyper storytelling style and language and occasional bending of the rules of grammar work well for this tale.
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