The Devil Wears Prada - Lauren Weisberger > Reviews > The New Emily

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Outstanding
Characters	Outstanding
Listenability	Pretty compelling but not addictive
How does it compare to similar audio books?	Quite good
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?	Not applicable

Advantages:	Nice pace, great characters, good writing style
Disadvantages:	Possibly exagerated, but still believable

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Andrea Sachs is a small town gal trying to make it in the big bad city. An aspiring author, she's fresh out of college and looking for an editorial job somewhere. When Andrea first walks into the Runway offices, she knows nothing about fashion, and doesn't particularly care to know either. Through some twisted hand of fate, the fashion-naive Andrea ends up as the junior assistant to the most powerful woman in the fashion industrial - a rather controlling woman by the name of Miranda Priestly. Editor in Chief of Runway magazine, The job has absolutely nothing to do with the journalistic career Andrea is yearning for, but, and this is what really gains her interest, one year working with Miranda Priestly will land her any job any where - including her dream job as a journalist with the New Yorker. It's only a year, how hard can it be?
Turns out, very! Miranda is quite possibly the most demanding boss ever, running a very tight ship - everything must be perfectly executed and fulfilled within minutes of her very vague instructions - 'Find me that restaurant review I read in the paper yesterday' - and heaven forbid you ever leave the phones unmanned! It's a job millions of girls would die for, but unfortunately Andrea isn't one of them, and getting through those twelve months becomes the bane of her life.
After a few months of comments about her clothes, shoes, hair, and weight, Andrea starts to get into their way of thinking, 'borrowing' clothes from the store room (don't worry, everyone does it), styling her hair and allowing the job to take over her entire life. In the process, of course, the rest of her life falls apart - she neglects her best friend at the time she needs her most, similar story with her boyfriend who decides they need a break; she even loses what makes her 'Andrea'. But surely it's worth it; it's the job a million girls would die for after all.

A lot of the book is written in a sort of flashback style, where Andrea accounts something that happened months before, then moves straight onto the event in hand. Occasionally this was quite confusing as there would only be a sentence or so between the four-month-ago event, and the present, which could be very easy to miss when you're in a hurry to find out what happens next. Other times this was downright annoying as the author, Lauren Weisberger, seems to have some great obsession with the phrase 'I didn't know then…' or things along those lines as its used more than a dozen times in the first few chapters of the book. Due to this back and forth in time style, the story doesn't always flow perfectly, but on the whole, it's okay.

The book gives a great description of just what it can be like to work for someone as unreasonable as Miranda Priestly, and how it can affect every single part of your life. You will sympathise with Andrea after every tongue bashing and put down from Miranda. But it's not always from Miranda. The senior assistant, Emily, takes great joy in seeing Andrea fail and while, on the one hand she's providing Andrea with the stepping stones to progress, she leaves a few out along the way. Likewise, her family and friends progressively become more hostile towards Andrea and her new job as the story progresses.

I had seen the movie prior to even opening the book and so did feel slightly cheated throughout, thinking that I knew what would happen throughout; if not every single scene, at least the major plot points. For the first three quarters of the book or so, this remained the same throughout - I knew what was happening. But the ending is very different to I remembered, and kept me needing to read on to find out exactly what was going to happen, how would the novel end? Even though I knew where the plot seemed to be going, the writing style kept me reading.

If you think you have a bad boss, or even some demanding friend or family member, then this book could show you that life isn't as bad as you think. For everyone else, this book is just a great read and opens your eyes to what life on the other side of the magazine page could really be like. At 391 pages, its weighty enough to feel substantial and take a few evenings to read, but not so heavy that it feels like a burden. Even though it centres around a fashion magazine, it's not overly heavy with the fashion stuff. I don't 'do' fashion at all (I'm a lot like Andrea in that sense!) and don't know many of the names of the major brands, but that doesn't hinder your enjoyment of the book at all, and where it is important Lauren Weisberger provides plenty of detail so that you feel clued in enough.