Sunday, June 11, 2006

The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada #1) by Lauren Weisberger * *

I want to start of with that I adore the movie. I watch it every month at least once. I've watched it with commentary, the trivia, seen the gag-reel, the deleted scenes. It's fun, and I love the acting.

The book was okay. I read it. My biggest problem was that the main character is a whiny b.. with a too dependent boyfriend and a stupid flatmate. If I work hard and all my bf can do is nag me about not seeing me enough, I'd tell him to go somewhere... Oh wait, I have done that. If my friend becomes an alcoholic, she can drown in it. How is that my fault? I can't stand not self-efficient people.

The main character is Andrea Sachs. She had been travelling around Asia for about a year, and when she gets back, she tries to get a job in the publishing industry. Now this wasn't written recently, but we all know that newspapers are dying. So when she actually gets a job in a women's magazine that is able to hire her, we all know that she should be happy. However, since it's not some high-brow paper, she's biased from the beginning. However, the problem doesn't just seem to be that Runway is a fashion magazine. It is actually Andrea's work ethic, which is annoying.
What Andrea could not get is that when you are at the bottom of the barrel, you work your ... off. Who hasn't worked 'til 10pm? And poor her, she had to wear fashionable clothes, because looking good is so awful. Granted, her pay may not have been as much as she worked, but starter pay is usually not a lot.

Miranda Priestly is "The Boss from Hell", supposedly. She does seem to ask more from her assistant than would be normal, but with a bit of creativity, Andrea could have made her own job a lot easier. There are a lot of demanding jobs out there, and a lot of bosses ask for a lot. For the most part, I felt that Andrea's problem with Miranda was that she had a lot more money.

In the movie, Andrea becomes successful in her job. She actually learns a lot, and manages to acquire a sense of style. In the book, she doesn't develop at all. When she goes to Paris, they have to draw up charts for her as to what she should wear to what occasion and how to do her make-up. When she leaves, it's not because she realises that it's a world where friendships don't matter and at the end of the day it's about saving your own neck. She leaves because her drunkard friend got into an accident and she has to sit beside her bed. Then when she wants to suddenly leave her boss without help on the most important week of the year, she gets mad at her boss. No boss would have let her go. I just wanted to slap Andrea and give her a reality check, then take her job and be better at it.

The whole book just felt like a whine-fest.

I have also reviewed the second book, though that was a lot worse, and I couldn't manage to get very far with it.