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Summary: What a real friendship is about.............................
Review: Terri McMillian has been my favorite author since forever! I read her books before it became the thing to do (I didn't like the movies!) In this book the bond these women share are genuine and heart felt. You are always closer to your girls and you know that they have you when others can't get you! I love it, the weight issue, abusive men, desperation, single mom, deadbeat dads, stupid husbands and through it all these women are true to one another and that is what we are about. When we think there is nothing you can always count on your girls!
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Summary: Movie version was horrible, book was okay.
Review: I watched the movie version of this book and cringed in my seat from embarassment! To think Forrest Whitaker (an African American producer) directed this rather sexually childish movie is a complete disgrace.The book version, however, was much better than the movie although that's not saying much since the plot is the same:
LORETTA DEVINE'S character is a sexless, fat, loud Black woman with no life of her own (Hattie MacDaniel in Gone with the Wind).
WHITNEY HOUSTON'S mother actually encourages Whitney to sleep around -- even with an obviously married man (horrible).
ANGELA BASSETT'S character was in love with her marital status more than her husband & blamed her husband's White mistress for the breakup (childish) and Angela decides to destroy his possessions (what, instead of him?. Go figure.)
Oh, and LELA ROCHON'S character -- she equates sex with love, a surefire way to be on the losing end with ANY man. So there's both the book and the movie. Is there any wonder these characters had the lives they deserve? While the author's writing is breathtaking, this book comes off as degrading to Black women and negative on Black males. I am sure Ms MacMillian made a lot of money off this depressing stuff. Since her "success" there have been far too many mindless writers publishing books with pretty covers and NO real writing ability.
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Summary: Profound and just plain honest
Review: Waiting to Exhale is by far one of the most profound and straight up books on the market. I know the characters of these women too personally and the story scenarios are all too real. Ms. McMillan is a wonderful storyteller. Great story, I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Women Looking for Love....
Review: Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan After having read HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK two years ago, I've been looking forward to reading another Terry McMillan novel. WAITING TO EXHALE is about four thirty-something African-American women who have one problem: MEN. Savannah is an executive who is trying to find Mr. Right. She always seems to think she's found Mr. Right, always on the verge of finding the man of her dreams, but she always finds out in the end that the guy is just another jerk. Gloria is a very overweight but stylish woman who owns a hair salon in Phoenix. It's THE place for black persons to get their hair and nails done, and Gloria has done pretty well for herself and her young son. The man in her past is her son's father, a man she never married, but it seems that deep down she wants more from him than just a friendship. Bernadine WAS married to a highly successful businessman, until he decides to take off with his young white bookkeeper and leave Bernadine with the house, the expensive car, and the kids. And Robin is this highly intelligent woman that keeps attracting losers. Unfortunately for Robin, she has no idea they're losers. She seems to be totally blind to that fact. There's a lot of humor and fun in WAITING TO EXHALE. As each woman deals with her own man problems, their friendships keep each either from going insane. I loved watching Bernadine as she set fire to her husband's BMW. I crossed my fingers each time Savannah met yet another eligible bachelor. I prayed that Gloria would find someone to share her life with. And I wanted to smack Robin around a bit, every time she went back to her loser boyfriend Russell. I enjoyed this book a lot and had a good time with it. What I enjoyed about it the most were the characters: Terry McMillan writes characters that are so vivid in my mind that they jump off the page and become real. Even her most shy and most insecure characters seem to have such depth to them. I feel that she's got a gift that not all writers seem to share, and that is to make the reader want to know her characters, and if not that, at least we have a good idea what her characters are all about.
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Summary: If Ma Rainey were a blues *writer*, she'd write this
Review: The Buddha said: "Enlightenment is progressive disillusionment." Is there anything more painful--or more artistically exhilarating--than when you realize a psychological illness has become a cultural paradigm? I was completely turned off at even the thought of reading this book when it replaced the New Testament as the bible through which my emotionally toubled ex began reexamining her entire world (which in retrospect I see may not have been the author's intent) while we were in college back in 1992. Years later, before the movie starring Whitney Houston was done, another girlfriend of mine told me to read it, and stop judging it ignorantly. WAITING TO EXHALE could probably best be described by the jazz music critic Albert Murray. It is a literary setting of women singing the blues, insightful both in the sad/funny and ridiculous events of the characters that could easily have you laughing as you turn the page. Insightful also, however, in how the four hundred odd pages of the book make you realize that, in respect to the conciseness of the blues, once you go past a novelist's version of twelve bars you probably aren't being honest. On one hand, it was great to see that in this long book there was so much more substance and dimensions to the characters that seemingly became one-dimensional icons for Man-bashing in the Black community throughout the 90's. On the other hand, WAITING TO EXHALE seemed to be as sexually/socially irresponsible and immature as it was non-judgmental or unapologetic, as words like "God", "virtue", "honesty", "addiction", "faith", "history","trust", "*condoms*," "therapy", "responsibility", "lesbian," "denial," "self-respect," and "AIDS" appear a WHOLE lot less often than phrases like "what's wrong with him?", "please; have you ever tried to (sexual expletive) a little (sexual expletive)?" and "he turned me out!" Among the many things the book made clear in its time--from McMillan's writing style as well as its appeal--was how rampant sexual and relationship addiction had become in the fin de siecle Black middle-class thirty-something community. It is almost frightening how well she shows our community to be so completely assimilated to the Dominant (and most superficially secular) Culture's way of life that, when white people aren't around, we are often doing sociologically what the characters of the book are doing individually: staring directly into the abyss of our nearly non-existent political activism, and back on more of our youth and innocence lost than we can ever look forward to. Though she shows how true this is with today's Black women in a way that ironically smacks of a sad triumphalism, McMillan shows it so well in her writing that it is hard to ignore. This and the subtle levels of Woman's psychic inhumanity to Woman that is another core theme of this book, underneath the good times, are strikingly vivid to anyone willing to look at it. In the end, though she has written some pretty financially successful works with a marketing strategy that glorifies the dysfunction in our community's relationships, I don't know if Terry McMillan is talented enough to write a book outside of these obviously autobiographical themes. Every writer writes what he or she knows, but I always that that was where the process of making art via craft begins, not where it ends. (In other words, don't expect your grandchildren to be reading her stuff in between the collected works of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker in Great Black Authors 101.) Just the same, if you have a free weekend and want to come to a greater understanding of the sticky complexity of male/female relationships, the Siamese twin Zeitgeists of American female codependency and Negro Heterophobia passing through the 90's, and the modern woman's heart all in one (without the clinical study feel of a book like Stanton Peele's LOVE AND ADDICTION, or Collette Downing's THE CINDERELLA COMPLEX), you will enjoy this. Her writing style is consistently raw and engaging (given the subject matter), and, more often than not--even for men--a lot of fun. Make it your summer read it before you rent the movie. It is, as books vs. movies usually are, much better.
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Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I really disliked this book. The message seemed to be: Without a man, you are nothing. The whole book was about these four woman trying to find men, as if there lives were meaningless without them. Everything else in their lives seemed to be secondary. I read it to the end, but had no compassion or interest in these women whatsoever. There wasn't one whose character I liked. They weren't even nice. A very disappointing read, and a very sad message.
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Summary: Excellent book!
Review: The story of four friends who laugh, cry, get mad and be there for one another. You'll love it.
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Summary: Women Of Color
Review: Highly entertaining and enjoyable book about four middle-class African-American women. The reason this book was popular among all women, regardless of race, was that the problems the characters dealt with--infidelity, lack of available men, problem teenage children, divorce--most women could relate to.
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Summary: Girlfriend
Review: Of all the books Terry has writen to date, Waiting is my favorite. The characters were just like sisters I know, I could identify with them, and their situations were true to our lives and what we live through. I could have wished for a happier ending for Savanah, but why? Admittedly, my life, and the lives of many of the sisters I know are just like this! I just wish the movie had been a little better.
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Summary: THEY MADE A MOVIE BASED ON THIS!!!!!
Review: This book was filled with man-hungry shallow women. They seemed to live their lives around finding a man. What exactly was this book supposed to prove...
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