Let me begin this review with a question: is it the book or the main character in the book that is ghastly or is it both of them? Difficult to tell in some respects.

This is a very peculiar story about a very peculiar set of circumstances but I believe that it is based on a true story. See what you make of it.

Andrea is a young lady who wants to be a writer/journalist and has set her sights on working at The New Yorker magazine. In the meantime a job comes up at a fashion magazine called Runway. The Runway job is to act as junior assistant to the Fashion Editor Miranda Priestly.

Andrea had, gasp, never heard of Miranda until she attends the interview. Of course, Miranda turns out to be the single most influential person in the entire fashion world, apparently. Oops!

The interview goes in rather a peculiar fashion but Andrea gets the job that a million others would die for: this mantra is repeated by Andrea and others many times throughout the book.

Andrea is the lowest of the low in terms of any sort of pecking order at Runway but of course there are times when she suddenly becomes catapulted to a position much higher up the hierarchy: the Paris trip for example.

The stresses and strains of life for Andrea take us outside the office from time to time and her parents, boy friend and best friend. They all have to share Andrea as she becomes Miranda's chattel. As everyone else goes home, including Miranda, Andrea has to wait for a call that will summon to her Miranda's flat armed with the day's latest page mockups and photo shoot outputs. This can keep her working until 11 pm at times and even beyond. To help keep Andrea a little bit sweet, she is provided with a chauffeur driven car, on call, at such times. Quite right too.

The boy friend is a teacher and he takes his sufferance in good part for most of the book: eventually he bursts a little.

The parents are parents and are really no more than cameos but they provide a little bit of a diversion from time to time.

Then we read about the model types who work at Runway: all tall, thin a rakes and all wearing designer clothes, shoes and coats and all sporting the latest haute couture handbag and other accessories. Andrea turned up at her interview dressed something like, erm, me! She was soon put straight! Handily, of course, since Runway is a fashion magazine that could even make or break the likes of Versace and Gucci, they have racks and racks of clothes that eventually adorn the backs, buttocks and legs of these office bound sirens.

Every man who works at Runway is gay and effeminate: please correct me if I missed the odd heterosexual! All with bods to die for, all wearing clothes from the designer ... the same as the women.

The whole organisation is, essentially, a fantasy based on extravagance. Not only designer clothes and accessories whose makers I really have never heard of and could not repeat now; but expense accounts the size of Mount Everest. Seriously, the most ghastly part of this story is probably the extravagance and therefore waste associated with the way that Miranda lives her life and runs her business affairs.

The best, changes of mind and having to rework something, are common place. Trips to foreign climes. Unused tickets replaced with ever more expensive tickets. Having dozens and dozens of a white Hermes scarf on tap because Miranda always wears one somewhere on her body and may go through up to three or four a day ...

Personal chefs and nannies, sorry POTENTIAL chefs and nannies, are flown in threes and fours half way across the world to be interviewed. The latest version of Harry Potter, one copy, is flown across the Atlantic by private jet just so that Miranda's children can have access to them ONE day before their friends in Britain.

I haven't said yet that Miranda is English and she is parodied in the book by pronouncing Ahn-dre-ah instead of Andrea! I assume she was made English because the real Miranda was an Englishwoman. Otherwise, it's an interesting choice!

Miranda exhibits appalling behaviour: not looking at people when she speaks, no thank you, not speaking until spoken to, people dismissed from her presence in the most cruel and thoughtless ways, failing to acknowledge the obvious presence of another human being ... all par for the course.

For some reason there is a diversion relating to Andrea getting into the Runway office block: one of the security guards insisted on the charade of singing part of a song with Andrea having to provide the next sentence or verse in order to gain admittance. Tiffany's I think we're alone now was a particular favourite (Aside: Tiffany accompanied me on my drive from Johannesburg to Blantyre Malawi in 1988 ... on tape, of course!)

A Lothario appears out the blue and he takes a shine to Andrea. They met at a function where Andrea was behaving as relatively badly as she was behaving elsewhere for Runway. The man turned out to be a best selling author and they spent some time together: never consummated I think.

The first 150 pages or so of this book's 391 pages are given over to setting the scene. Page after page of stories about Miranda and her mannerisms and excesses and she's not even in the country let alone the building. That section could easily have been chopped by 100 pages and we would have been no worse off.

Once Miranda does appear the story then has a greater feeling of reality and meaning. Still, it's more of the same with the odd twist.

The story begins to end as Andrea accompanies Miranda on a trip to Paris. To a large extent this is the best part of the book even though it's the shortest element of it. Again, there is a twist to the story at this point; but a big twist! Then there is the parting of the ways: I felt the story fell apart here as Weisberger got the body language wrong in my opinion. Either that or Andrea was beginning to manage Miranda in such a way that Miranda would eventually have been working with Andrea rather than the other way round.

The Lothario reappears in Paris by the way but it's not a success for him any more than it was when they met earlier in the book.

Overall, a terrible book but all the way through I could see how it would be easy to turn it into a film; and that's exactly what they have done, with Meryl Strep as Miranda. I have seen just a clip of this film and Miranda has become American. I suppose that's not a big problem and I am looking forward to seeing the story in the cinema.

I don't recommend the book, though, to anyone other than someone keen to see how they talk about fashion designers in rather a detached way.

 

© Duncan Williamson
24th September 2006

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