The book tells the story of Andy, a young woman fresh out of Brown, who becomes the junior assistant to Miranda Priestly who runs Runway magazine, the most important 'zine" in the fashion field. The author actually worked in the same capacity for Anna Wintour of Vogue. Andy becomes a slave to the whims and demands of her boss who, in the book, is presented as the primal scream of high couture. The book details Andy's loss of humanity as the months ensue and her eventual recovery as the year ends, tragedy overtakes, and her boyfriend puts his foot down. It's a novel for Christ-sakes but one that I have come to learn is close enough to the truth to titillate the interested and petrify the knowledgeable. Hence the double New York Times reviews and the spleen they express.
Here are some quotes from these reviews:
Kate Betts, former editor in chief of Harper's Bazaar wrote:
"It's hard to get past the onslaught of Page Six gossip and film-rights buzz that has preceded "The Devil Wears Prada," Lauren Weisberger's thinly veiled roman a clef about her thankless year sidetracked in the trenches of a fashion magazine. Start with a Mommy Dearest premise featuring our most famous fashion editor, add an irresistible title and throw in a six-figure movie deal - does it even matter what's actually on the page when everybody is reading between the lines?And Janet Maslin wrote:
As is customary in this increasingly popular brand of bite-the-boss fiction, the names (and hair color) have been changed to protect the guilty. Weisberger worked at Vogue - here called Runway - as an assistant to its pencil-thin brunet editor, Anna Wintour, here the blond Miranda Priestly. Conde Nast has been renamed Elias-Clark, but Oscar de la Renta and Tommy Hilfiger and most of the rest of the vast throng of designers, photographers, models and celebrities who adorn the fashion firmament are undisguised."
"If Cinderella were alive today, she would not be waiting patiently for Prince Charming. She would be writing a tell-all book about her ugly stepsisters and wicked stepmother, taking care to position herself at the absolute center of their story. She would be dishing the dirt, wreaking vengeance and complaining all the way.Only one question remains. Where can you find this tome? For sure it is in bookstores. Whether it is also in pharmacies by the sunglasses I don't know. But it should be. As a change of pace it is a fun time out.
Cinderella may have been too nice for that, but Lauren Weisberger is not. Ms. Weisberger graduated from college and began per professional life in a low-level position at the Conde Nast publishing empire. Now she has written a novel, "The Devil Wears Prada," and can devote a second career to insisting it is not exactly, precisely, entirely one long swat at the editor of Vogue."
