Lauren Weisberger drops Emily Charlton, Miranda Priestly’s uber catty assistant from The Devil Wears Prada, into the suburbs of Connecticut. Emily, now in her 30s, is living in Los Angeles with a husband and a career as an image consultant—a career that is suddenly floundering—when she gets a desperate summons to Greenwich, Connecticut.
[When Life Gives You Lululemons] reads like 'The Real Housewives of Greenwich,' a reality show that doesn’t exist, but should… underneath the shiny surface, both Lululemons and Prada are exploring what it’s like to be a woman buffeted by conflicting messages about career, relationships and motherhood. My only quibble with Lululemons is that its satire can slip into cruelty. These characters are obsessed with body image, and their frequent references to weight sometimes morph them into mean girls... But those elements can’t dampen the humor here.
departing from an era in which so-called chick lit so often reinforced gender stereotypes, [When Life Gives You Lululemons] prove more adept at framing individual women as whole and human than [previously] ... There’s just one glaring problem... [Greenwich, Connecticut is] inhabited only by the white and well-to-do... I could spend all day imagining titles for more inclusive sequels, like Is That Too Much to Ask?
As always, Weisberger’s timely social satire packs some bite along with the pop-culture froth. The return of characters from Weisberger’s most popular book will propel her latest to the top.
