The Devil Wears Prada (Review)
Title: The Devil Wears Prada
Author: Lauren Weisberger
Summary: Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job âa million girls would die for.â 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 âThe Boss from Hell.â Narrated in Andreaâs 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 Mirandaâs 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 dayâand 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.
Review: This is one of those very rare cases where the movie is simply better than the book. LikeâŚa lot better. So much better that itâs incomprehensible, in fact.
To be honest, I wasnât expecting muchâdefinitely not a ground-breaking book that deserves to be on a bestseller list. But still, I was expecting to feel like I was at least reading the same story and not a new one entirely. The characters were all stiff and flat, the writing was poor and the editing was absolutely horrendous, and this wasnât even funnyânot even a little bit. I was heaving sighs and rolling my eyes and was tempted, on more than one occasion, to just chuck this book across the room and put myself out of my misery. It was absolutely beyond lame, and not worth the then hours I spent reading it. This is definitely one of my favorite movies, but the book? Skip it.
This book simply didnât deserve a pitiful one-star rating. I at least wanted to keep reading, if only to see if it would get better. Weisberger is no expert storyteller, but I was vaguely entertained; at least enough that I wouldnât put this on the list of the worst books Iâve read. All the things that didnât make me feel so exasperated were things I was pretty indifferent about; so, in the grand scheme of things, I guess thatâs almost a plus, right? The story moved at a decent pace, so I didnât get terribly bored, and the written was just above mediocre enough that I didnât want to gouge my eyes out from reading.
The thing that was, perhaps, the most infuriating to me was the characters. Firstly, I absolutely hated Lily and Christian (Andyâs best friend and almost-co-adulterer, respectively). Lily was a âfun girlâ who constantly encouraged Andy to live a little and stop being so monogamousâshe spent most of her time either whining or telling Andy that it was perfectly normal to hang out and sleaze around with other guys when you have a boyfriend. That really rubbed me the wrong way. And if Lily bugged me, Christian really made me angry. Usually, Iâm okay with a cocky love interest with a slight attitude problem, but Christian was downright rude and out of line. He would ask Andy out, kiss her, buy her drinks, make out with her, even when she tried to tell him no, but Andy passes it all off as part of his infuriatingly-sexy attitude. AndâŚno. Thatâs not sexyâthatâs sexual harassment. The rest of the characters were so flat and boringâEmily, Mirandaâs other assistant, was a plain-Jane with no personality; Alex, Andyâs boyfriend, was so non-confrontational that I wanted to scream; Andyâs parents and other friends and co-workers felt like the exact same character rehashed; even Miranda Priestly herself didnât feel like that much of a jerk to me. Maybe mean and delusional on what can and cannot be done, but I didnât get all the hubbub. Oh well.
All things considered, I expected this to at least be like, funny. A little bit. But it wasnât even remotely humorous. On the rare occasion, I would maybe chuckle to myself, but there was little about the writing or the story or the characters or the narration that was hardly smile-worthy. I was bored and I felt like there was no real reason for me to keep reading.
The writing is just petty and immature. It tells the story and hardly shows anything to readerâand there were so many grammatical errors that I wanted to pull my hair out and take a red pen to the text. Basic problems with dialogue punctuation, or tense change, or word omission, or verb tenseâugh! It was full of so many issues that I barely believed anyone edited it at all. There are certain things you should just learn when you decide you want to be a writer. Learn the proper way to punctuate dialogue and learn to keep everything in the same tense, and to not forget words. Learn to be a good enough proof-reader that you can recognize when you make a mistake. I understand that nobody is perfectâsome of my reviews have lots of typos that Iâm just way too lazy to fixâbut Iâm not a published author with an editor. And if the mistakes werenât so terribly basic, then I would give Weisberger a pass on it. But it was bad. This book definitely isnât for anyone looking for quality writing.
I absolutely hate when I read a book with a better movie or TV series or anything, because you know thereâs so much potential for the story. Youâve seen it executed in another, and much better, way, and that makes it even more infuriating to see the book go completely to waste. Itâs incredibly frustrating. The film simply told a better and more entertaining story than this book did, and I wish Weisberger had been able to tell a better story with the original tale. Itâs honestly amazing that the filmmakers managed to find a salvageable story in all of this, and thank goodness for that. All that potential gone to waste in this sorry excuse for a bestseller.
Overall: If you want to read this, Iâd tell you to just skip it and go to the movie. Itâs much better and much funnier and definitely worth the time. Iâd rather watch this movie five times in a row instead of read this book onceâit would all take roughly the same amount of time. The writing was just poor and even more poorly edited, and the characters and story werenât engaging, or good, enough to spend the time on it. Delete it from the virtual TBR and just move on to something better.