SOURCE: "Beneath a Jamaican Moon," in Washington Post Book World, May 5, 1996, pp. 1, 8.

In the following review, Schillinger commends McMillan's strong female protagonist and portrayal of desublimated female desire in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Schillinger concludes, "women are ready to read about themselves not only as schemers or sufferers, but as the adventurous heroes of their own lives."

Is a happy woman in charge of her own fate de facto an unsympathetic character—someone people don't want to read about and cannot empathize with? If so, the defenders of serious literature will no doubt join in unison to eject Terry McMillan's rip-roaring new book, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, from the Eden of politically and academically correct approval. Because, in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, no women weep; and Stella, in fact, revels. She revels and even gloats at being a woman, revels in being...