Devil or Not?

A million girls would kill for Andrea Sachs's job. She must be so

lucky to get to work for the most powerful woman in fashion

publishing. It must be so great to get all those fabulous clothes

and rub elbows with celebrities at parties. If anyone else says

those words to Andrea, she's going to stab that person to death

with the spike heel on her Manolo Blahnik sandal. The approximate

cost of said sandal is one-and-a-half weeks' pay, but that's all

right ... Elias-Clark Publishing will pay for it to be fixed.

Andrea's boss, Runway magazine's editor-in-chief Miranda

Priestly, is demanding, unrealistic, powerful and a guaranteed

ticket to any job in publishing, assuming Andrea can survive a year

of working for her. Though Andrea's real goal in life is to write

for the New Yorker, she casts a wide net of resumes after

graduating from Brown University, hoping to get a job that's

anything but mundane. Not knowing anything about the fashion

industry and not bothering to hide that fact on her job interview,

Andrea applies for a job as a junior editorial assistant

(translation: salaried slave labor) at Runway and lands it

anyway. Suddenly, she's the envy of half the publishing and fashion

industry...the other half knows better than to envy Miranda's

assistants.

As we witness Andrea's self-pitying diatribe on the superficial

fashion world, and how it takes over her life and makes her forsake

her relationships with her family, her best friend and her

boyfriend, the voice falls flat and begins to drone around page

seventy-five. Though the setting itself is a fast-paced world, the

pacing of the narration is incredibly slow. Andrea's growth as a

character is limited at best, self-discoveries are few, and the

predictable ending is akin to that of a made-for-television

movie.

Is the reader