Signed and dated by author without inscription on title page. With her trademark ability to write thought-provoking tales inspired by the lives and loves of contemporary African-American women, McMillan offers another novel sure to resonate with readers grappling with the questions Marilyn poses to herself.Hard Cover. As they seek their own solutions, Marilyn discovers she's pregnant, Lovey shows signs of Alzheimer's, Arthurine begins dating, Joy struggles to get sober and Marilyn's ex-husband reappears and awakens old feelings. Meanwhile Leon's questioning his professional future, his marriage and his fashion sense (he buys a Harley and starts dressing 'like a chubby old hip-hopper'). With her three kids in college, Marilyn works part-time at a crafts store, feeds her neglected creative muse with various artsy projects, and jaws with her friends in their good-natured regular 'Private Pity Party.' Having always been there for others her engineer husband, Leon her drug-addicted sister, Joy, and Joy's two kids her live-in mother-in-law, Arthurine and her mother, Lovey Marilyn wonders what it would be like to think of her own needs for once. Her candid, spirited narrator is Marilyn Grimes, a 40-something wife and mother who's beginning to feel unappreciated by her family and underwhelmed by her 25-year marriage. But first, she has to figure out exactly who that is.īestseller McMillan (A Day Late and a Dollar Short) does what she does best in her long-awaited sixth novel. Today forty-four year old Marilyn Grimes has decided to be something other than a wife, a mother, a sister, or a daughter: herself. For a long time I have felt like I inadvertently got my master's in How to Take Care of Everybody Except Yourself and then a PhD in How to Pretend Like You Don't Mind. I've been an accountant, a banker, and on occasion, a broker.

A veterinarian's assistant and sometimes the veterinarian. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. “Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple and even simultaneous careers: I've been a chauffeur. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Terry McMillan comes a “frank, no-holds-barred, humorous look at African-American midlife” ( The Seattle Times).

The interruption of everything