Books: Aftershave

HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK by Terry McMillan, Viking pounds 16

It's a good trick to be able to make a book with a big background without getting bogged down in it, a fine, grown-up novel which offers all the fun of a thriller without the hostages to plausibility. Terry McMillan's last book, Waiting to Exhale, was on US bestseller lists for 38 weeks and made into a major film; disappointingly, Stella lacks its grit and edge.

Stella is 42, successfully juggling a career and single motherhood. When her son goes away she takes herself off to Jamaica, where a tall, dark and handsome boy half her age starts making eyes at her across the restaurant. The book makes a decent job of charting her sexual and emotional emancipation. Its problem is that it follows the girl-meets-boy formula and, once girl has got boy, the plot simply doesn't develop. After their first night together, the book dwindles into detailed accounts of Stella' s various outfits.

Why does Stella falls for Winston in the first place? Well, he wears good aftershave (Escape by Calvin Klein, by the way). McMillan has said that she hopes Winston will inspire men to change their ways: I sincerely hope not. The man is a vague wisp of a character that lurks in the shadow of Stella's self-satisfied diatribes: one-dimensional, improbable and (dare I say it?) boring.