How Stella Got Her Groove Back (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
I almost gave up on this book halfway through, but it picked up again. Winston, Stella's love interest, never felt real to me--he was just a reflection seen through Stella. So while I could see the impact Winston had on Stella, I never felt or believed it myself.A couple of running incidental themes began to really bother me by midway through the book. One was a constant judgement of people's bodies, and they more or less came in two types: exquisite and disgusting. Not exactly empowering messages. The other was a recurring running list of stuff Stella bought, which got boring pretty quickly. Both of these themes faded away in the second half of the book, otherwise I probably wouldn't have stuck with it. It may have shown an evolution in Stella's character, or maybe not--neither theme was addressed directly or even indirectly as such.I did like this passage, though: "[A]s I stand here I realize my life has already changed and regardless of how long he stays, no matter what does or doesn't happen, I have already discovered there is another side you can go to, which is pure and good, that it is always there waiting for you to notice, that it is free but costly to find yet once you arrive, once you get there, you find that you can bounce again skip again gallop again that you can recover from loss and pain and heartache that you can be repaired renewed restored without even comprehending what or how it has happened and you can simply blink and accept the fact that you are absolutely and equivocally a new and improved version of your old self and no matter what happens from here on out you will not misplace yourself again you will not get so lost you can't get yourself back you will not let the dust pile up collect settle all over your heart, no siree, not ever again." (p. 407-8)
I'll be writing about the film for my dissertation, and so I knew I had to check out the book, too.I've got to say that I really didn't like it. First, I found McMillan's style distracting. I believe she's going for a stream of consciousness style, but the lack of most punctuation combined with sentences that frequently take over half of a page makes for a really difficult, rather than comforting, read.I also found the text problematic on grounds of gender. The movie portrayed Stella as strong, fierce, fearless: in the book, she is a whiny bag of neuroses. There really is no plot; the conflict that makes the movie interesting is absent. Instead, every single thing that Winston says/does leads Stella to jump to the conclusion that he's playing her because she's older, whine a lot, yell at herself, and then breathe a sigh of relief when her pages of freaking out turn out to be unfounded. Repeat this cycle many times, and that's pretty much the book.And on a side note, why does this character hate her body so much? There are MANY references to her hatred of the natural scent of her vagina, her insistence on showering several times and using feminine deodorant spray in her underwear, and douching repeatedly. These things are bad for women's bodies; I thought we all knew that already. Her self-loathing of her vagina seems pretty darn unfeminist to me.Blurgh. Hated this book, really.
What do You think about How Stella Got Her Groove Back (2004)?
This is a story of a single mother who has gotten caught up in her corporate job and has started to lose touch with the things that are important to her. The story is about how she gets back in touch with her "inner self" and finds love in her life again.The characters are all very likeable. It's a good story, although the author's writing style takes a little getting used to. She needs to be introduced to the serial comma. After a couple chapters you'll get used to that and the reading becomes a bit more smooth.A predictable plot, but all in all, an enjoyable story.
—Michelle
It's fine for a quick mindless read, and darkly ironic because it's based on McMillan's then-marriage to a charming, younger man from Jamaica that...erm, didn't turn out so well. My main problem is with the story's predictability (which is fine, because it never attempts to be thought-provoking or deep) and the damned run-on sentences. Oh, but one thing I DID like: the inner-story reference as Stella reclines on a beach reading--what else--one of McMillan's novels. I don't have the exact quote, but she says something about the book being "Something from a young hotshot author who wasn't that great and cursed too much."THE IRONY.
—Rachel
Definitely a 'beach' read, but worth the time since all one is doing is lazing about. I enjoyed Terry McMillan's light read all the more after learning it is autobiographical of sorts, and caught her with the much-younger hubby on one of the late afternoon talk shows (Oprah's, I seem to recall).Spoiler alert: The marriage didn't last. I wouldn't have expected it to, given all that Stella has, and brings to the table. He provides a fun boy-toy, I suppose, much like the plot of How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
—Elizabeth Moore
