"The Devil Wears Prada"

"The Devil Wears Prada"
Lauren Weisberger
Broadway Books, $13.95





We all think we have the worst job in the world.

But we have never worked as an assistant to Miranda Priestly — the job a million girls would die for.

Andrea Sachs is Lauren Weisberger's character who is fulfilling the role as the devil's assistant — just until she puts in her year and is able to move onto something better. She puts up with the nonstop coffee runs, 16-hour work days, laundry pickup and dropoff and more on a daily basis because she has her eye on what could be ahead for her. She aspires to be a writer at The New Yorker, and working for the editor of Runway — only THE magazine in the fashion world — is a great start. Especially because it's the job a million girls would die for.

So she keeps telling herself.

But through her year of servitude, Andrea loses herself. The relationships with her parents, best friend and boyfriend strain. She loses sleep. She loses her own life, independent of Miranda and work.

But she never loses her ambition to try for something better.

Weisberger creates a dreadful character that anyone would hate — Miranda is quite devilish. She is the foil to Andrea, the recent college grad with plans to change the world and be successful and happy in her life. She says again and again, if she can get through this one year of working the job a million girls would die for, she will have a good start to her career and a leg up to all other recent grads struggling to be writers.

Andrea becomes a hero, someone the reader can see in herself, someone she aspires to be. You pity her. You want her to quit her job. You want her to realize that maybe it's just not worth it.

Weisberger cleverly gets the reader to thinking this through the way she has crafted her story. Each chapter is a new story, a new drama brought on by Miranda, and through telling the stories, Andrea brings up past incidents with the so-called Devil, with wearing the wrong clothes, with saying the wrong words, with eating the wrong food. Throughout the book, Weisberger doesn't flat out say that the reader should hate Miranda and the position Andrea is in, but the reader gradually grows to feel the stress on Andrea, the hatred she has for her job, for her boss, for her life and the direction it has taken.

The climax of the book slows down. Although I got to watch Andrea mature and learn to stand on her own two feet, I was hoping for something more. She improves, she moves on in her life and she gets some revenge on the hell that was her job a million girls would die for. But for getting so involved in the plot, becoming Andrea's cheerleader and imagining ways her life could pan out, I was disappointed in the way the book ended. It fizzled, and I expected sparks. But Andrea's story was inspirational, and just because the final three chapters of the book did not contain as much drama as the first 16 doesn't mean the book got bad.

The novel is somewhat girly and fashionistic. But underneath the Prada exterior, there is a real story that anyone who is frustrated with her life, her job — anyone who wants to just stick it out for a little longer until she can move onto something better — can relate to.

Weisberger's strong, motivated Andrea helps show the ugliness of the pretty, the poor side of fashion, the strength you can find when you think have fallen to your weakest.