PRADA, VERSACE, ARMANI, AND ALL: A BOOK REVIEW OF LAUREN WEISBERGER'S THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

A SAMPLE REVIEW
BY CHRISTINE JOY DE SOTTO CASTOR


WHAT WILL YOU do if your heaven-sent job turns out to be a living hell?

Picture yourself in a pair of Prada suede pants driving a Porsche roadster around Manhattan traffic with your boss barking orders over the phone. Never mind not really knowing how to drive a stick-shift car. Never mind not having a good sleep at all and not having a hearty meal since yesterday. What matters is you reach your employer’s apartment with the car together in one piece. Just step on the gas and have your car to a quinta or you will be eaten alive.

Now, breathe. It was merely a delusional nightmare. Thank goodness! Unfortunately, for Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, this is one of the daily antics in Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada, an amusing novel about the most impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses.

Narrated in Andrea’s smart and charming voice, the novel traces a deep, dark, and devilish view of social life only hinted at gossip columns and over traditional cocktail parties. It revolves around Andrea who just arrived from India and who is recovering from amoebic dysentery in Avon, Connecticut. She then decides to move to New York after landing a good job in Runway, a popular fashion magazine where Prada, Versace, Armani, and all shout at every turn, where thin and stylish men and women clad in tight leather pants and fine-ribbed turtlenecks thrive.

Besides trying to blend herself in the fashionista crowd, Andrea struggles to remain sane from her devious boss, Miranda Priestly, the high profile and fabulously successful Runway editor. She does her very best to stay enthusiastic despite the impossible demands of "her majesty," ensuring that she serves Starbuck’s Café Latte to Miranda at the piping hot temperature that she prefers, sends the latest not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by a private jet, and locates an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser.

Soon, Andrea learns that to get to the top and to stay there, she must sacrifice a lot. Afraid that her poor work performance would get her fired, Andrea allows her choker job to occupy her wholly and starts to neglect her personal life. Her relationship with her boyfriend, Alex, soon fails to go through. She loses her personal identity and chooses her work over her responsibilities as a sister, daughter, best friend, and girlfriend.

In the novel, Andrea is well reminded that she landed the job that "a million girls would die for." As her tasks escalate from merely unaccepted to downright outrageous, she begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for will eventually kill her in the end. And even if she survives, she has to decide if her job is worth the price of her soul.

Despite the roller-coaster events that the novel imposes to its readers, it remains to be satirical yet honest and entertaining. It revolves around the awful reality that fresh graduates encounter on their first job, their first glance on the world of work, firmly discussing the perks and drawbacks of working through the eyes of a simple dreamer.

Weisberger chose a perfect location that blends career and fashion together—New York City—where women in baro’t saya are as abstract as life on Venus. With its skyscrapers and never-ending hustle and bustle, one just cannot imagine women in abaniko escorted by men in tungkod at salakot hurrying in its subways. Of course, women clad in a mini skirt by Gianni Versace and biker-chick black boots by Georgio Armani are not always any better with women in Maria Clara or Balintawak complete with fine manners.

The novel chronicles a sense of "girl power," and Andrea’s tough job simply screams what girls want to prove: "I can do this and I can still look great at the same time."