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- Hardcover: ; Dimensions (in inches):
1.24 x 9.48 x 6.52
- Publisher: Doubleday; (April 15, 2003)
- ISBN: 038550926X
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Book Description
A delightfully dishy novel about the all-time most
impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses.
Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a
million girls would die for.”
Hired as the assistant
to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of
Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts
Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly
thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed
turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication
to the gym.
With breathtaking ease,
Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a
scared, whimpering child.
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to complaints
about “The Boss from Hell.” Narrated in Andrea’s smart, refreshingly disarming
voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted
at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail
parties.
From sending the latest,
not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by private
jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point
admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the
piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every
day—and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone.
She puts up with it all
by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will
get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate
from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea
begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just
kill her.
And even if she survives,
she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.
It's a killer title: The Devil Wears Prada. And it's killer material:
author Lauren Weisberger did a stint as assistant to Anna Wintour, the
all-powerful editor of
Vogue magazine.
Now she's written a book,
and this is its theme: narrator Andrea Sachs goes to work for Miranda
Priestly, the all-powerful editor of Runway magazine. Turns out
Miranda is quite the bossyboots.
That's pretty much the extent
of the novel, but it's plenty. Miranda's behavior is so insanely over-the-top
that it's a gas to see what she'll do next, and to try to guess which
incidents were culled from the real-life antics of the woman who's been
called Anna "Nuclear" Wintour.
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 bellows
over the line: "I am standing in the pouring rain on the rue de Rivoli
and my driver has vanished. Vanished! Find him immediately!"
This kind of thing is delicious fun to read about,
though not as well written as its obvious antecedent, The Nanny Diaries.
And therein lies the essential problem of the book.
Andrea's goal in life is to work for The New
Yorker--she's only sticking it out with Miranda for a job recommendation.
But author Weisberger is such an inept, ungrammatical writer, you're positively
rooting for her fictional alter ego not to get anywhere near The New
Yorker.
Still, Weisberger has certainly one-upped
Me Times Three author Alex Witchel, whose magazine-world novel never
gave us the inside dope that was the book's whole raison d' etre.
For the most part, The Devil Wears Prada focuses on the outrageous
Miranda Priestly, and she's an irresistible spectacle. --Claire Dederer
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