By Beauty Damned

Is it Crrrap?

I finished reading "The Devil Wears Prada" a couple of days ago.

"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."

I have to say it was definitely the worst book I've read this year (and I've read a lot). An endless, somewhat banal, narrative of a year in the life of a young girl who gets her first job in New York as the go-fer of an infamous fashion editor. If David Sedaris had written it and it was gut wrenchingly funny, it would have been a whole different book. But it wasn't.

It wasn't funny. Not even a little bit. All it did was get me into a fashion-mania phase where I can't stop browsing shoes and handbags on the internet and bore the daylights out of me with the constant letdowns that the book presented. Every time you thought something might happen in this book, it didn't. Every opportunity the author had to create an interesting twist or make you identify with the main character a little bit more, she bypassed it. I was so irritated with the main character and her whining, bumbling, unchanging personality, that by the time I reached the last page I wanted to throttle her with everything I had. And this is a character I was supposed to sympathize with? No cigar.

And at the end (I'm not afraid to ruin it, because I'm not recommending the book), all she has left to show for a year of neglecting her friends, family, any kind of peace of mind or normal life she might have had and being a slave to this demanding megalomaniac of a woman the entire time, is masses of couture and beautiful Louis Vuitton luggage. And you know what the dumbass did? She sold it all! ALL OF IT. If I ever had the opportunity to amass a fortune of expensive clothes and shoes and luggage FOR FREE (as she did in the book by working at the fashion magazine), I wouldn't sell a single thing that I liked until I'd spent my last penny and I was about to be living on the street. Then, and only then, would I give up all that stuff. But then, I guess I'm kind of materialistic when it comes to clothes and shoes. And that luggage! At least if I could have related to her and liked her throughout the book, maybe I could have seen her renouncement of all that stuff as a somewhat humble and meaningful act of selflessness, but I just saw it as one more stupid move on her part after a series of annoying antics and scenarios that played out through the book. One message to the writer: Lauren, you're not funny. And until you get really, really witty and entertaining, don't write another book that possesses no plot whatsoever. If you're going to write a book with with no plot, at least wait until you learn to write with some depth and intensity or you wake up one day and find out that you have suddenly been bestowed with a fabulous sense of humor. Neither of which is very likely to happen.

I shouldn't be criticizing because nobody is buying millions of copies of my book, which I still have not written, but all the same, as a reader who started the book with a completely open mind and even a bit of excitement, I can honestly say that it was no damn good.

Posted by Maria at September 23, 2003 09:45 PM | TrackBack