Miss Understanding

August 21, 2006
Lessing brings back fictional fashion-forward magazine Issues
and its newly minted editorial honcho, sartorially challenged feminist Zoe, sister of She's Got Issues
protagonist Chloe Rose. Publisher Dan Princely (aka Chloe's devoted new husband) has gone gaga for Zoe's agenda and gives her a mandate to revamp the magazine's usual fare of shoes, makeup and shopping into a manifesto of female empowerment, decorum and personal growth. Zoe renames the magazine Miss Understanding
and gleefully introduces it to the staff as a didactic, humorless instruction manual. The staff, predictably, hate Zoe and are willing to go to any length to sabotage her: they include stylish nasties Sloane and Blaire; perennially drunken promotions department head Ruth; and even Dan's regal, evil mother, Anita. As the antics escalate, Zoe's droning, pompous rants on the evils of style and the necessity of fixing female friendship become longer, angrier and more Dworkin-esque, without being funny. By the time the book devolves into a schematic pitched battle between the united, righteous sisters and the psycho, infantile staff, it's hard to care about who's switching covers on the magazine right before it goes to press or how Zoe's running trials with pregnancy will play out.

September 15, 2006
Fashion freelancer Lessing introduced sisters Zoe and Chloe in her first novel, "She's Got Issues" While that book focused on ditzy Chloe, now the spotlight shines on smart but strangely clueless Zoe. A former columnist for "The Radical Mind" not to mention a fashion disaster, Zoe is an unlikely editor at "Issues" the fluffy fashion magazine that she and the owner (her brother-in-law, Dan) want to turn into a serious, woman-empowering publication. Several underhanded staff members, however, resist her quirky editorial ideas ( -Why You Find Yourself Strangely Attracted to Your Best Friend's Bald, Fat Fiancé -), embroiling Zoe in the kind of female power struggle she deplores. Fortuitously, Zoe's long-lost best friend from second grade works at the magazine, and they join forces. This book should interest readers who like glamorous cat fights à la Lauren Weisberger's "The Devil Wears Prada" but its appeal is somewhat lessened by Zoe's unrelenting oddness. An obsessive-compulsive and hypochondriac, she is a difficult character, although she does have flashes of real humor. Recommended for larger chick-lit collections." -Lisa Davis-Craig, Canton P.L., MI"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2006
Lessing, the author of " She's Got Issues" (2005), returns to the offices of a woman's fashion magazine, this time with mixed results. Here she chronicles what happens when uberfeminist Zoe Rose becomes deputy editor and attempts to institute a radical new editorial policy. Zoe's sister Chloe, the heroine of Lessing's debut, also returns and is as ditzy and shoe-obsessed as ever. What works is this tale's satiric take on women's relationships with other women as Zoe's struggles to show her coworkers how they use beauty and sexuality to compete with one another. What doesn't work is that Lessing has overpopulated the story with eccentric characters and bizarre and sometimes confusing plot twists. But Lessing's intentions are good, and her sense of humor shines. Fans of " She's Got Issues" will likely come back for more of her weird and unique take on today's workplace.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)