The Devil Wears Prada
Author: Lauren Weisberger 2003 360 pp
My rating: 2*
Started November 19 2008, Finished November 23 2008.

“… incredibly unfunny, uninteresting, wholly uninspired …” (310)

This may be the first book I’ve ever read which can be classified as pure chic lit and now there is another genre I will avoid. From the standpoint of general literary worth, specifically quality of prose and development of believable, three dimensional characters, this roman a clef is easily the worst fiction I’ve blogged so far. However, it is saved from a really savage rating by it’s overall readability -- it generates just enough interest to keep the pages turning -- and by its one interesting character, the loathsome Miranda Priestly, the narrator’s boss, editor of a big deal fashion magazine who is apparently closely modeled on Anna Wintour of Vogue where the author once interned. This book would probably appeal to fashionistas -- the Sex in the City crowd -- but not to literistas, which is somewhat ironic since the narrator/protagonist, Andrea, repeatedly claims she is not of the fashion world while expressing a devotion to and desire to work for The New Yorker. It seems unlikely that Devil’s prose which consistently reads like a cross between email and journal entries would qualify her for a writing job at that magazine with its state-of-the-art writers. Some samples of Prada’s uninspired and hackneyed prose:

“Lily’s New Year’s party was good and low key.” (96) If she’d tried, Weisberger would have been hard pressed to find a less descriptive adjective than good.
“The boy genius who’d first been published at the ripe old age of twenty.” (118) An Ivy League English major ought to have sense enough to avoid a bled-white phrase like “ripe old age.”

Further complaints are that the protagonist’s supporting cast, her boy friend and best friend, and her relationships with them are unconvincingly depicted and subject to the whims of plot convenience. The book’s climax when Miranda suddenly appreciates Andrea’s devoted slavery to her every whim and offers to help her obtain a position at The New York occurs at the same time as Andrea’s friend is hospitalized after a drunken car wreck is purely contrived melodrama. The ensuing fully predictable happy endings are Hollywood pat.

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Like everything else at Elias-Clark designed to make employee’s lieves better, it just stressed me out. (129)

Miranda … had deliberately created a persona so offensive on every level that she literally scared people skinny. (217)