Miss Understanding: A Feminist Novel About a Magazine Editor's Humorous Quest to Unite Women and Reform Girl Behavior

by Stephanie Lessing

Zoe Rose never quite fit in. As the only kid in kindergarten with an enormous red afro, Zoe was taunted by the other little girls for refusing to share her "Annie" wig, even when she swore it was her own hair (it was). In second grade, after seeing her best friend ridiculed for wearing a dirty, pink, polka-dot party dress to school every day, she became obsessed with understanding what makes normal girls tick and why they're so cruel to the girls who never seem to "get it." And so Zoe begins a lifelong study of girl behavior, and by thirty, finds herself editor of Issues magazine. Determined to raid the locker room of the female psyche and rip open the frilly façade of femininity once and for all, she sets out to reform an entire nation of women, beginning with the readers of the most notorious magazine on Madison Avenue. It's the feminist vs. the fashionistas. Can Zoe stop girls from behaving badly toward other girls, and turn them into a strong, united force that can succeed in our male-dominated world? Or will her spectacularly warped sense of humor, pathetic wardrobe, and plethora of psychosomatic illnesses get her eaten alive? Zoe's willing to risk losing it all, including her mind, but she'll walk away with something she never dreamed she the little girl hiding inside of her.

Genres: Chick Lit, Fiction, Romance, Friendship

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Stephanie Lessing began her career as a writer in Kindergarten. It was at that time that she wrote her first introspective short stories, “Why am I the only one with an umbrella?” and “What I wouldn’t give for Missy Cohen’s culottes.” Shortly thereafter, Stephanie found herself in Boston University studying Public Communications and then in the American College in Paris where she was granted an internship at the International Herald Tribune.

After graduating from BU, Stephanie landed her dream job at Mademoiselle Magazine as a copywriter and spent all of her money on the most amazing shoes ever. She soon became Copy Chief and traveled cross-country with Mademoiselle editors co-hosting fashion and beauty events, and then she quit because her feet were killing her. After leaving Mademoiselle, Stephanie began freelancing for Vogue, Glamour, Self, American Health, WWD, Bride’s, Conde Nast Traveler and Vanity Fair. It was during this period in her life that she began writing a collection of essays entitled, “A Girl’s Guide To Girls.” Many years later, she turned the essays into a novel, She’s Got Issues, which was published in July of 2005.

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, so I love chick lit, and judging from the blurb on the back of the book, it appeared that this book was chick lit. It may have been, but it didn't fit the formula. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. What was bad was the constant confusion I had over what was going on. First person narrative only works if you can understand what the narrator is thinking (and doing). Maybe that was the point, but the entire time, I'm thinking, what is going on here? You can tell that something is going on that maybe the narrator is missing, so the author gives you enough to know something is going on but not enough for you to figure it out. She won't give you enough to get a clear picture of the narrator's reality, which is really annoying. I really didn't like this book, and most chick lit is harmless enough to tolerate, but this was awful.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

YUCK! YUCK! YUCK!
Look, I am ALL about chick-lit. Totally. I read Nora Roberts for heaven's sake. But this bored me from the first paragraph (WITH the notable exception of when she goes to her first meeting with her large breast hanging OUT of her shirt)!! I so didn't enjoy it and I am SO not going to pretend I did. It had the same tone and cattiness of "Jane Austen book Club" (which I ALSO disliked greatly) and to be honest, I remember very little about this book. I really cannot believe I wasted an afternoon reading this. YUCK!!!


~language

[Lisa Mandina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving it a 3 star rating, because it's in my physical reading record I kept before Goodreads, but I don't remember reading it. My sister marked it as a 4 star, so I feel 3 is probably fair.

[Margaux · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this book negative stars, I probably would. This was probably the worst book I've ever read, including my high school Algebra text books.
I was so angry at the lack of plot and character development, I continued to read it, in the hopes that the ending would blow me away and make up for the time I wasted reading it.
Instead I was let done with the anticlimactic ending and the last chapters that rush to ensure each character has a happy ending. From the ridiculously unbelievable main character Zoe, a tiny red head, big boobed, loud mouthed, obnoxious feminist who gives "normal" girls a bad name, to the stuck-up closet lesbian mother in law, the only time I laughed during this book was when I was finished and realized the author had the gaul to litter the chick-lit genre with this waste of paper.

If you want to maintain brain cells, do not read this book.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Made it about 100 pages in, but ultimately didn't care about any of the characters or the situations. And Zoe's big fashion faux pas in the beginning could have been avoided if she'd applied a safety pin to her bra as well. What 36DD woman goes out in public, to a business meeting, bra-less? I don't care if you don't care or know style. It just wouldn't happen, unless your breasts figured prominently in your career.

[Kristen Beverly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was an easy read, but the writing is horrible. I was very intrigued by the summary on the back of the book and the concept is good, but the the writing is just terrible. When she's talking as if she's in kindergarten, she uses grown up words and sentences. Nothing that a little girl in kindergarten would ever say. It should at least be believable.

[Erica Glass · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out hating this book but I was on an airplane so I kept going with it. A while into it I started to really appreciate the message, if not the main character so much. I think it had interesting points about the way woman interact with each other as well as family dynamics.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to ignore the reviews on this one but even for a bargain book I was a little bored and disappointed. It was a little hard to follow who was talking when and the timeline was a little crazy. Don't recommend.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy the book. It was humorous and I found myself laughing out loud. It seemed rushed at some points. Months passed without any mention and that made the ending feel a little rushed to me.

[Varbra Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally got this book! I found every type of woman that I ever met. I felt the pain that we women can inflict on one another. It was an excellent read!

[Samantha Haigwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNFed @ 6%. Couldn’t even make it through the first chapter…😑

[Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

It really wasn't my cup of tea, and I'm not apt to recommend it to many people. I'm usually fair about giving books a fair shot, even if they're from genres that I don't normally read. I don't know if I absolutely hated it, but I definitely don't rank it as a good read. At least it was very easy to digest (I read it in about a day).

The story focuses on a rather flawed and seemingly quirky magazine editor who has a lot going on in her life, and she seems to speak in a dialect that's meant to be quirky and fun, but I found more often than not that it was quite cliched. I didn't like the polarizations of the other characters here either - they would have been far more interesting if it wasn't just a matter of dealing with "good" versus "bad" characters, and there are so many threads that are dangled in this book with respect to feminism and depression and other issues that just don't work themselves out by the book's end. It's so eccentric that it loses itself in those eccentricities is the best way to put it.

[Yvonne O'Connor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Zoe was a bit of an outsider as a child and this led her to focus on why girls are mean to each other. When she lands a job as editor-in-chief of a magazine published by her brother-in-law, she thinks her message will have a real platform. Little does she know but his mother and many of the staff will plot for her failure. In the middle of this, she gets pregnant, her sister takes off around the country, and her staff sabotage everything - all except one staff member who turns-out to be the best friend she had when she was little!

This is chick-lit gone bad. Too many characters, too many cliches, and too many sub-plots.The premise was hard enough to swallow without the rest of the fluff! By mid-novel, I was rooting for Blaire and Sloane to succeed in taking Zoe down. This is like the Legally Blonde script threw-up on the Devil Wears Prada and still went out in public. The whole baby addition was unnecessary and detracted from what could have been saved as a plot.

[Brenna Sluiter · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book. This goddamn book. The only reason I kept the copy I rescued from a pile of secondhand books is that I have grand plans to go back through and mock it because, oh man. The main character is the most unlikable character OF ALL TIME (Humbert Humbert included), and barely competent as a human, let alone as a functioning adult and somehow managing editor or whatever of a major publication? She natters on about how women need to escape their social conditioning to be in constant competition with one another while simultaneously referring to every other female character as a "girl" and denouncing them as sluts or bimbos. I screamed a lot while I was reading this book. I threw it across the room a couple of times. I only finished it out of a sense of obligation. If this book was a person I would walk up to them and punch them in the face.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm scrolling down looking at the ratings for this book and I'm shocked at how many people dislike it. And they're all alike but somehow I failed to see what was being talked about. Alot of people said they felt like they were missing something. I didn't get that.

I like the book. I loved Zoe's sense of humor and her outlook on thing. I'll admit, she was a bit weird with her germaphobia and stuff but she made alot of sense. Each character was unique and I loved how they all came together in the story somehow. There was nothing about the book that was hard for me to understand and I followed along with every page. I even laughed out loud a few times.

I was hooked from the first chapter to the last. No disappointment.=]

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe in the possibility of good chicklit with a strong feminist sensibility. This book has not realised that possibility for me.

The plot was a rambling mess, as was the structure - three chapters are devoted to Zoe's first day, laden with superfluous detail. The characters are awful and even the most feminist of them engage in negative female competitiveness. This may have been Lessing's attempt at the kind of satire and irony Zoe purported to offer the magazine, but I was not buying it.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Alex looks like shes entering the courtroom of the biggest case of the decade. Maybe its the hair. It always looks like its being televised. She takes out her laptop and her slew of other electronic devices and begins plugging herself in. I always forget how impressive she is when she first walks into a room.

I Look around at my fellow subway users. I'm trying to feel good about these people but everyone always looks so swollen and unhealthy in the morning.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

After finishing this book I went back to look at some reviews. Mainly because I am thinking "I wonder if anyone else hated this book as much as me". Turns out most do thankfully. I thought the entire thing was weird, pointless, bizarre and oh yeah, the main character Zoe is NUTS!

I will add this to the list and pretend like I didn't waste my time reading this. I don't know if I will read anything else by this author; perhaps if I get desperate.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so this book has some language and can be a bit crude, but I have not laughed that hard from reading a book in a very long time. The author does a great job of capturing how ridiculous women can be with each other. I read it on a plane ride once and was laughing out loud. Maybe it was because I was coming home from a very difficult trip involving the loss of a loved one, but I really enjoyed this book.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'd be going on a limb if I said I enjoyed this book. Lessing left little dialogue to the reader and I found myself saying, "Really, you had to spell that out for me, I could have figured it out." While important, Lessing tried to address too many issues in this book and didn't really do a good job on any of them. I found myself anticipating the end just so I could move onto another book. Sorry Lessing.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having had a look at some of the reviews of this book, I wasn't expecting much. Clearly I have lower standards than other readers as I really enjoyed this. Zoe is a bit nuts, it has to be said, but I quite like that. Ye, some of the plot is a bit implausible, but I'm happy to suspend belief for a while for an entertaining read. Don't expect high fiction, but if you want a bit of light relief give it a go.

[Lauren Casula · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I didn't read She's Got Issues, but I absolutely hated this book. Full of cliches, boring characters, not very funny. The thing that drove me absolutely crazy about this book was the drawn out dialog and weird characters who were completely unbelievable. I would not recommend this book to anyone. Sorry, just had to vent. This was the worst book I've read in a long time.

[Shannon Lane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish I'd read some of the reviews before I read this book. I picked it up at the airport and was stuck on a plane with it. I finished it because I always feel guilty not finishing books--also, because I was stuck on a plane with it. The main character is really unlikeable--actually, most of the characters are unlikeable.

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't care much for this book and some part of Zoe's character I did not get. I didn't realize this book was a sequel, maybe if I read the first book I would have liked this book more.
On a better note, I did enjoy and breezed through the last 100 pages of this book. The author does have a sense of humor.

[Gelsey Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fun, easy read. Sometimes I like to read a frivolous women's romantic comedy sort of book. It's in the same category as "The Devil Wears Prada" "Something Borrowed" and others. It's not deep, but it also wasn't too petty either. I'd recommend it for a light and easy read. I wouldn't say that I learned a lot from this book, but it was entertaining.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate to review a book I couldn't finish but this book just drove me crazy. I love to read on the train to and from work. I will read anything. I read this for about a week and suddenly just couldn't do it anymore. I carried it around for a week until finally I accepted that I've given up. The characters are unrealistic and not even remotely likeable. It's poorly written. Just not good.

[Barbara Tennant · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was AWFUL. Scattered plot, neurotic and annoying main character, stupid side plots, and just plain BAD writing. Ugh. I couldn't finish it. I read about 3/4 of it thinking it would get better, and it never did. What a disappointment. This is honestly one of the worst boosk I have ever read.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do I have to repeat everyone? Flawed, unlikeable protagonist. Poor character development. Terrible plot line. And I had a really hard time following the timeline. One day she's just finding out she's pregnant and the next weeks she having a baby and seemingly a short time later the baby is walking and talking. It made no sense.
Crap. Drivel. Waste of time.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just an 'okay' sequel to She's Got Issues. I LOVED the first book, but this one was felt like the author was struggling to create the personalities of the characters. Instead they were just plain weird and somewhat boring.

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious!! I can not recall ever laughing out loud while reading, until this book. It was great! Now I look for anything that Stephanie Lessing has done. I just finished She’s got Issues. My review will soon follow.