Author: Lauren Weisberger
Everyone Worth Knowing is a novel by the author of The Devil Wears Prada. Similar to The Devil Wears Prada, the author of Everyone Worth Knowing also focuses on workplace culture and work relations. This is also why I liked these books; they vividly portray office culture and office relations, a large focus of my research. These books do so in the form of a novel, which is also what I enjoy and what I sometimes use to design my research questionnaires. Ultimately, writers observe realities, and while the stories they write are fiction, often conditions, circumstances, and events are based on reality.
In Everyone Worth Knowing, the author provides numerous details when describing work. The focus is on public relations, specifically events management work of PRs who organise everything from Playboy parties to taking clients to restaurants so they can be seen, which also means building relationships with restaurants so they can quickly please clients while restaurants obtain publicity. So, it works for everyone, but as I often say when teaching, PR is not just about hanging out, after-work parties, and perks; it is also a job with long working hours and little time for oneself, which this novel vividly portrays.
In Everyone Worth Knowing, the author introduces a former banker who randomly quits her job without thinking it through due to her manager’s abuse (e.g., unpaid overtime, no lunch breaks, and insults when she takes a break with her colleague until he openly bans lunch breaks). She then accidentally ends up in PR, and while she does really well for herself, she also has no free time, and pretty much hates her job and her colleagues. The book is also a criticism of the PR professionals, which I cannot say I particularly appreciated. Yes, there will be lots of empty heads and idiots, but there are lots of hard-working and nice people (try to ask for a research interview in PR and other fields, and then see who will not just speak with you but also help you find other people!). I am not keen on generalizations, and either way, I became an advocate for the industry and its relationship-building techniques, which go far beyond corporations and have a wider social use, so I was mildly annoyed. There could have been at least one positive character in the book, come on!
But my personal bias aside, the book was an interesting read, and it provided a good insight into celebrity PR, which is the type of PR the author covered here. I also enjoyed references to fashion, albeit I think there could have been more of that because, in PR, one indeed needs to be about appearances. This is somewhat lacking in the book, but what is there seems fairly accurate and is well-written.
Thank you for reading!