[In the following review, Wolcott comments briefly on How Stella Got Her Groove Back and McMillan's literary success.]

Waiting to Exhale was for Terry McMillan what Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was for Anne Tyler—a popular breakthrough after years of paying dues. McMillan's previous novels, Mama and Disappearing Acts, had found a niche with readers, but had done nothing to separate her from the pack of other praiseworthies. Then came Waiting to Exhale, a huge best-seller, its liftoff supplied by the jubilant, snappy talk of its female characters—especially when they ragged on men. History and the burden of race didn't give weight to its pages, as they do in much black fiction. Set in Phoenix, Waiting to Exhale exulted in light, open, possibility-filled space.

McMillan's new novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which is coming from Viking this month, is also set in the airbrushed present. There are a lot of long sentences without commas, to convey the anxious rush of its heroine's acceleration through life. Lots of "You go, girl!" backslap, too. McMillan, who took flak for portraying black men as sneaks and sheiks in Waiting to Exhale (a controversy that was reignited when the book became a hit movie), tries to make amends here in the form of Winston, whom Stella meets on a vacation in Jamaica. He is so fine: only twenty-one—half Stella's age—he is responsible, polite, and attentive to a woman's needs, and when he and Stella kiss, those long sentences without commas ascend like goldfish bubbles.

The first printing for the book is a monster one million copies, which makes McMillan the Oprah of black fiction, selling and exemplifying the holy trinity of wish fulfillment: money, fame, and romance. McMillan doesn't write for worrywarts. How Stella Got Her Groove Back, like Waiting to Exhale, is a sexy handbook of self-realization.