Wednesday 2 October 2013

Devouring Books: Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

I can't remember whether I read the book or saw the movie first, but both versions of The Devil Wears Prada I like quite a lot. I mean... How can you not enjoy Meryl Streep acting like an utter bitch and looking amazing and being the best person in the world? (Also Anne Hathaway is good, too). The movie is awesome and the book is great because it has almost supplementary information that wasn't included in the film but really underlines how awful the whole experience of working for Anna Wintour Miranda Priestly must be.

Since reading The Devil Wears Prada, I've read a couple of Weisberger's other books (Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston) and... I've been underwhelmed. They're fine, but fairly standard chick lit stuff, and it's hard not to think that maybe Weisberger is just better at fictionalising her own experiences* than she is at making stuff up. After reading Revenge Wears Prada, I'm pretty sure that is EXACTLY the case.

This book is really bad. I don't know if it's bad purely because Weisberger has taken Andy's character and completely fucked it up, or if it's actually bad, but I kind of hated reading it. Why did I carry on, I hear you cry? I think I thought, 'well, this can't be all there is to it' except that it was and suddenly it was the end of the book and I hated myself for reading it. It's honestly the worst sequel I've experienced since Sex and the City 2, and that movie is a fucking abomination.

Ok, so here's the story with this book- it's ten years after Andy quit her job at Vogue Runway and she's set up her own magazine, is marrying the man of her dreams and is best friends with her ex-colleague Emily for no apparent reason other than that Emily is a great character that Weisberger didn't want to get rid of. She's pretty much leading the life that you would have wanted for her and that should be awesome, only it's not because Andy is kind of terrible now. It's possible that she was always terrible and I just didn't realise it, but I don't think so...

Here's the deal- Andy is kind of whiny and complains a lot, when it doesn't really seem like she has anything to complain about. It's made eventually (sort of) clear that she's not as happy as she should be, but the woman is running a magazine, lives in Manhattan, and basically has everything anyone could want in life, and yet this whole book is like 'why is Miranda here where I am? Why doesn't my mother in law like me? Why does everything bad happen to meeeee?' and it's just like, dude, stop being a dick, no one wants to hear it.
I feel like some of this might be a perspective thing- in The Devil Wears Prada, Andy really was treated appallingly, so her whining was sort of justified and I sympathised with her. In Revenge Wears Prada, basically nothing bad happens to her and yet she still thinks it's ok to whine about everything all the time? That's just not cool. And if you lose sympathy for Andy, you lose pretty much all interest in the whole thing because it's just her. Sitting around and moaning. For a whole book.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that, either. There's some semblance of a storyline, but it feels like Weisberger found it really difficult to think of reasons for Miranda Priestly to appear in this story, and since she's really what this is all about, it was really disappointing. It's even more disappointing that she's not even that mean to anyone (that we know of) because the whole point of the Devil is that, you know, she's a massive bitch. I don't even get the title, really, because revenge is so not a part of this story- Andy doesn't get revenge on Miranda, and Miranda doesn't care enough about Andy to want revenge on her, and it's just ridiculous and stupid and I hate it.
Basically, this is a sequel to a book that never needed a sequel. If it had been good in any way, it probably would have been fine, but it wasn't good in ANY way. It was so bad it's kind of sullied my memories of The Devil Wears Prada (the book, not the film) and I'm not sure I could ever read it again knowing what Andy is going to turn into. It's not pretty. If you haven't seen it, I totally recommend you watch The Devil Wears Prada, and you can even read the book! Just don't. Read. This.

*She was Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue. I... don't know why I expected you to know that.

15 comments:

  1. It always makes me sad when authors do this. I'll avoid it like the plague.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I honestly barely understand when books are part of a series, but when it's a book that CLEARLY didn't need a sequel... No. Just, no.

      Delete
  2. Well, at the very least this made me want to read DWP.

    Also, did you know that there's a decent-sized shipping contingent for Miranda/Andy, and it's called Mirandy? And that someone wrote a Titanic AU for them? Yeah. That happened.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can't even deal with this information, Alice. I just... WHAT?! I can't get on that ship, because Miranda is literally the devil. As the name of the book suggests...

      *whispers* I don't know what a Titanic AU is, please elaborate. Even google couldn't help me with this one...

      Delete
    2. Awww, little non-fandom people. Um, an AU is an alternate universe, so like the same characters and a similar dynamic, but in a different setting/maybe different character names. So this one was set on the Titanic. HERE IS AN EXAMPLE

      Delete
  3. Wait, the Devil Wears Prada book was good? What now? I thought the movie was good pretty much BECAUSE of Streep (and a little Hathaway) and that without them things would have been...ugh. Or maybe that was just my reasoning that the book can't live up to Streep as Miranda.

    But really, given this review, I think I'll avoid both this one AND the original and stick with the movie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I mean... The book is good in a kind of chick lit way. Like, it's on the upper end of chick lit. And its the best of all her books that I've read, so that's kind of how I assess things? The movie is still better because OMG MERYL! So I support your decision.

      Delete
  4. Good thing I was at the library yesterday and did not pick this one up. It sounds like the author was trying to make Andy a whimpier version of Miranda without it ever really happening??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know that she was trying to make Andy anything like Miranda, because she doesn't start ruining peoples lives or anything like that... She's just kind of awful and complains about everything and I just wanted her to shut up? In a nutshell!

      Delete
  5. The Devil Wears Prada is a greeeeeeaat film and I remember the book being great too but now that you've compared it to Sex and the City 2 I will NEVER read this. That film made me want to gouge my eyes out and learn to time travel just so I could go back to before it started and LEAVE. I have had the same experience with her other books, they're kind of meh and not as good, and if this is worse than them then there just can't be all that much good about it, thanks for the warning.

    On the other hand, that kid from School of Rock is great. In fact, School of Rock is just great... *goes off to watch School of Rock*

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are sooo welcome for the warning. If I can stop just one person reading this book, I consider my work here done. I'm trying to decide whether this was better or worse than SATC2, and I think this *was* slightly better... Possibly only in that I did keep making the (admittedly bad) choice to keep reading this, whereas I would never ever choose to see that abomination ever again!

      SCHOOL OF ROCK IS THE BEST. You better have actually watched it!

      Delete
  6. I did wonder how she managed to make a sequel at all, I guess really she didn't! Will avoid this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha, well she managed to write something! Just... Nothing worth reading. Sometimes it's ok to let things lie, authors!

      Delete
  7. I have this terrible affliction where I now desperately want to loan this book from the library and see how bad it is. I haven't even read the first one (only saw the film) but this sounds so god damn terrible that I can't get past it. It's like the worst version of rubbernecking.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Maybe the revenge part is something like that saying, "Living well is the best revenge"? Except that Andy isn't really living well if she complains about everything...so I'm out of ideas.

    I pop in Devil Wears Prada whenever I (a) have had a bad day, (b) need motivation to get something done, (c) want to put off doing something, (d) need to dust the TV. I've seen it so VERY many times.

    ReplyDelete