Most recent college grads know
they have to start at the bottom and work their way up. But not many
picture themselves having to pick up their boss's dry cleaning, deliver
them hot lattes, land them copies of the newest Harry Potter book
before it hits stores and screen potential nannies for their children.
Charmingly unfashionable Andrea Sachs, upon graduating from Brown,
finds herself in this precarious position: she's an assistant to the
most revered-and hated-woman in fashion, Runway editor-in-chief Miranda
Priestly. The self-described "biggest fashion loser to ever hit the
scene," Andy takes the job hoping to land at the New Yorker after a
year. As the "lowest-paid-but-most-highly-perked assistant in the free
world," she soon learns her Nine West loafers won't cut it-everyone
wears Jimmy Choos or Manolos-and that the four years she spent
memorizing poems and examining prose will not help her in her new role
of "finding, fetching, or faxing" whatever the diabolical Miranda
wants, immediately. Life is pretty grim for Andy, but Weisberger, whose
stint as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue couldn't possibly have
anything to do with the novel's inspiration, infuses the narrative with
plenty of dead-on assessments of fashion's frivolity and realistic,
funny portrayals of life as a peon. Andy's mishaps will undoubtedly
elicit laughter from readers, and the story's even got a virtuous
little moral at its heart. Weisberger has penned a comic novel that
manages to rise to the upper echelons of the chick-lit genre.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
