How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Terry McMillan, 1996
Penguin Publishing
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451209146
Summary
Stella Payne is forty-two, divorced, a high-powered investment analyst, mother of eleven-year-old Quincy—and she does it all.
In fact, if she doesn't do it, it doesn't get done, from Little League carpool duty to analyzing portfolios to folding the laundry and bringing home the bacon. She does it all well, too, if her chic house, personal trainer, BMW, and her loving son are any indication.
So what if there's been no one to share her bed with lately, let alone rock her world? Stella doesn't mind it too much; she probably wouldn't have the energy for love—and all of love's nasty fallout—anyway.
But when Stella takes a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Jamaica, her world gets rocked to the core—not just by the relaxing effects of the sun and sea and an island full of attractive men, but by one man in particular. He's tall, lean, soft-spoken, Jamaican, smells of citrus and the ocean—and is half her age.
The tropics have cast their spell and Stella soon realizes she has come to a cataclysmic juncture: not only must she confront her hopes and fears about love, she must question all of her expectations, passions, and ideas about life and the way she has lived it.
Told in Stella's own exuberant, dead-on, dead honest voice, How Stella Got Her Groove Back is full of Terry McMillan's signature humor, heart, and insight. More than a love story, it is ultimately a novel about how a woman saves her own life—and what she must risk to do it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 18, 1951
• Where—Port Huron, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley
• Awards— Essence Award for Excellence in Literature
• Currently—lives in northern California
Terry McMillan is an American author. Her interest in books comes from working at a library when she was sixteen. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 at University of California, Berkeley. Her work is characterized by relatable female protagonists.
Her first book, Mama, was published in 1987. She achieved national attention in 1992 with her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for many months. In 1995, Forest Whitaker turned it into a film starring Whitney Houston.
Another of McMillan's novels, her 1998 novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was also made into a movie. Disappearing Acts (2012) was subsequently produced as a direct-to-cable feature, starring Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan.
McMillan also published the best seller A Day Late and a Dollar Short in 2002 and The Interruption of Everything in 2005. Getting to Happy, the long-awaited sequel to Waiting to Exhale, was published in 2010. In 2013, she published Who Asked You?, an intimate look at the burdens and blessings of family, and in 2016, I Almost Forgot About You, a look at mid-life crises.
Personal
McMillan married Jamaican Jonathan Plummer in 1998; she was in her late 40s and he in his early 20s. He was the inspiration for the love interest of the main character in her novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Her life did not follow the movie when, in December 2004, Plummer told McMillan that he was gay; in March 2005, she filed for divorce. The divorce was settled for an undisclosed amount. In March 2007, McMillan sued Plummer and his lawyer for $40 million, citing an intentional strategy to embarrass and humiliate her during the divorce proceedings; McMillan eventually won a judgment of intentional infliction of emotional distress, but had withdrawn the suit before the case went to trial; Plummer was never ordered to pay the intended amount. On September 27, 2010, the two sat together with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to discuss their post-divorce relationship and partial reconciliation; both acknowledged that he fulfilled the role of boyfriend and husband before his coming-out, although McMillan stated that "he's not my BFF." McMillan has a son Solomon and lives outside San Francisco, California. (From Wikiipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
Terry McMillan is the only novelist I have ever read...who makes me glad to be a woman.... Fans of McMillan's previous novels, the hugely popular Waiting to Exhale and the more critically esteemed Disappearing Acts and Mama, will recognize McMillan's authentic, unpretentious voice in every page of How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It is the voice of the kind of woman all of us know and all of us need; the warm, strong, bossy mother/sister/best friend.
Liesl Schillinger - Washington Post Book World
So much fun in so many ways...a down-and-dirty, romantic and brave story told to you by this smart, good-hearted woman as if she were your best friend or your sister.
New York Newsday
A confessional, sister-can-you-understand-this open diary....I laughed out loud.
Boston Globe
The novel sparkles.
Chicago Sun-Times
A riotous, sexy book...told in the inimitable voice of Stella, who will charm the reader from the first page.... Fans and first-time readers will be hooked.
Richmond Times Dispatch
A liberating love story...tells women it's okay to let go, follow your heart, take a chance and fall in love, even if that love comes from a place you'd least expect.
Orlando Sentinel
[A] a fairy tale.... [R]eaders who have been yearning for a Judith Krantz of the black bourgeoisie—albeit one with a dirty mouth and a more ebullient spirit—will be pleased with this fantasy of sexual fulfillment.
Publishers Weekly
.
[A] tossed-together tale.... The love story provides a suitable frame for the author's trademark charm and credible sense of black middle-class values, but sloppy prose and a single, rather solitary protagonist fail to give readers the synergistic magic of the earlier book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)