The Making of Mia

The Making of Mia

by Ilana Fox

Orion, HK$81

The Making of Mia is so startlingly unoriginal that I assumed Ilana Fox must really be Umberto Eco having some postmodern fun. Our heroine is Joanne Hill, a mousy secretary who takes a job at Gloss magazine. After her horrendous boss Joshua Garnett ritually humiliates her in front of the office, Jo draws up a list of her three life ambitions: to run her own magazine, to be thin and to fall in love with someone who loves her back. Jo decides her personality doesn't cut the mustard so she invents a new one and calls herself Mia Blackwood. After some plastic surgery, Jo/Mia sets out on her journey to find the meaning of true happiness with a new face and enormous silicon breasts. The message Fox seemingly intends to send out to young women frankly beggars belief: forget talent, integrity and nature, you need to be anorexic, shallow, bitchy and someone else to succeed. And it is not just Jo who wants to be someone else. Given the 'allusions' to Ugly Betty, The Count of Monte Cristo and, most shamelessly, The Devil Wears Prada, Fox is under the apprehension that she is at least three other writers entirely. It could all be a brilliant satire, but I doubt it.