SOURCE: A review of Waiting to Exhale, in Times Literary Supplement, November 6, 1992, p. 20.

In the following review, Sellers finds only "modest" literary merit in Waiting to Exhale, but notes its appeal among "glitzy, commercial women's novels."

Terry McMillan's novel, Waiting to Exhale, raced up the New York Times bestseller lists immediately after its publication in the United States early last summer, and has lingered near the top for twenty-three weeks. There are already more than 700,000 copies in print. Paperback rights for the book startled the recession-conscious publishing industry by selling for $2.64 million, and McMillan's drop dead stare and Nefertiti hair-style have become familiar features on daytime television talk shows and in glossy magazines across America.

Most black women writers are associated with a recognizable tradition of serious, ideologically inspired black literature, written primarily for "concerned" whites and black intellectuals. McMillan, however, has little truck with ideology of any...