Terry McMillan's novels feature chatty, catty narrators who have a story they're just busting to tell you. The dominant voice in A Day Late and a Dollar Short is Viola Price, whose asthma just sent her to the ICU. And who came to visit? The Jheri Curl-wearing Cecil, "a bad habit I've had for thirty-eight years, which would make him my husband." Viola doesn't think Cecil's such a catch: "His midlife crisis done lasted about 20 years now," and "to set the record straight, Cecil look like he about four months pregnant." But somebody did catch Cecil--he recently left Viola for "some welfare huzzy" with three kids. And, as we soon find out in Cecil's first-person chapter, Viola has abundant flaws of her own. McMillan deftly sketches the exasperated intimacy of the long and unsuccessfully married.

She also has great dish about family dynamics. Have Cecil and Viola's kids got problems! When lovable, luck-free Lewis turns up to visit his mom, he's drunk, broke, and still whining about his ex, Donnetta, who "didn't have as much sense as a Christmas turkey" (though she did have the sense to dump Lewis). Now Lewis consoles himself with his Bobbing Betty doll. "How could somebody with an IQ of 146 be so stupid?" marvels Viola. And that Charlotte! Viola's daughter is "a bossy wench from the word go." (Gee, where could she have gotten that trait?) Charlotte feels like she never got her fair share of attention, having been born 10 months after the eldest daughter, Paris (now the driven mom of a brilliant athlete whose white girlfriend claims she's pregnant). Charlotte took it out on younger Lewis and Janelle, who's been in college 15 years with no degree in sight.

At first, you'll make ample use of the family charts in the endpapers to figure out who's who, but pretty soon you'll feel right at home with the squabbling, multiply dysfunctional, ultimately loving Price clan. You may agree with Viola: "Some folks got some stuff that can top ours. Hell, look at the Kennedys." --Tim Appelo


From Publishers Weekly
her four adult kids, all of whom have their own children, and their various circumstances, relationships and dilemmas. Not about to give Viola the last word, the other family members take turns talking in each of the remaining chapters. At first it is a bit confusing trying to keep track of who's who (the audio book doesn't come with family charts, the hardcover does), but it all eventually becomes clear as this complex and entertaining story of family dynamics or as daughter Paris calls it, "As the World F***ing Turns, again and again and again" gets fleshed out. McMillan is in her element, and readers Coleman and Willis do an excellent job of capturing the personalities of all the characters, be they surly, sassy, depressed or comic. Their talents guide the listener expertly through this captivating and ultimately optimistic tale of the ties that bind and the things that really matter. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Forecasts, Dec. 11, 2000). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
McMillan's fifth novel introduces the Price family with the matriarch Viola surviving another major asthma attack. As her husband, Cecil, and four adult children rally around to support her recovery, the family's problems begin to surface. Paris, the oldest daughter and the most "together" on the outside, is secretly dependent on prescription pain killers. Then there's Lewis, the alcoholic with lots of "book sense but no common sense"; Charlotte, who is starved for attention; and Janelle, the baby, who can be led by anyone who says "go." Although McMillan develops her characters thoroughly, the plot feels rushed at the end, which, in fairy-tale manner, leaves everyone happy and satisfied. This, however, is the book's only fault. Otherwise, it is another of McMillan's dark comedies (if a bit grittier than usual) that explores family life using witty dialog from a very colorful cast. For popular and African American fiction collections.-DEmily Jones, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Boston Globe
McMillan is carving a formidable niche in fiction....


From AudioFile
The Price family may be fragmented, but they also depend on one another and care enough to meddle in each other's lives. Viola and Cecil are separated, but each is still involved with all four adult kids. McMillan tells all their stories in their own voices in alternating chapters, skillfully weaving the threads of memory, love, and family. Remarkably, two narrators make these people fully individual and differentiated. M. E. Willis moves from the older, weary, yet hopeful voice of Cecil to that of his son Louis, and there is never a doubt about who's who. Desiree Coleman's sisters are well crafted, with voices that express the circumstances of their lives in a subtly powerful way. Both narrators create characters the listener comes to know and recognize throughout the novel. McMillan understands her characters, and so do the narrators; the result is outstanding. M.A.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
After several years, McMillan is back with her distinctive style of unveiling the trials and mishaps of modern-day life for black folks. This time she focuses on the Price family: mother, father, three daughters, and a son in various stages of various life crises. Age and disappointment with her life and the lives of her children have driven Viola into a strident bitterness, and she has driven away her husband of 38 years with her constant criticism and cynicism. Cecil still loves Viola but accepts his banishment and starts over with a younger woman and her three small children. The Price children--Paris, Charlotte, Lewis, and Janelle--struggle with sibling jealousies, marital infidelities, child abuse, alcohol, and drugs. They have grown apart since all but Charlotte moved from Chicago to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and time and distance aggravate divisions among siblings and parents. Each of the children finds it hard to let long-maintained personal defenses down, even when their lives fall apart. Paris, the oldest and the "perfect one," can't reveal her loneliness since her divorce; addicted to painkillers, she maintains a punishing career schedule. Confronted with the fact that her second husband has been molesting her teenage daughter, Janelle has to choose between financial security and protecting her daughter. A strong matriarch, Viola struggles to hold the family together while she loses the softness within that had held her marriage together. McMillan has each family member tell Price history from his or her own perspective until the family reassembles after Viola's death. McMillan fans will be thrilled by her comeback. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Equal parts cultural phenom, literary trailblazer, and all-around righteous sister, Terry McMillan inspires hope and devotion, her novels -- including Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and Disappearing Acts -- celebrated for their affirming vision of empowered women. A Day Late and a Dollar Short delivers this and more, exploring the Price family: matriarch Viola; daughters Paris, Janelle, and Charlotte; husband Cecil; and son Lewis. And as never before, McMillan's men give as good as they take, equal to their feisty, fast-talking feminine relations. The layered characterizations -- revealed through first-person chapters told individually by each family member -- imbue the novel with a rare dimensionality, as the same people and events are viewed from multiple perspectives. And more than the title allows, the Price family in McMillan's A Day Late and a Dollar Short discovers that forgiveness can offer powerful healing, even from beyond the grave.

Any man with a whiff of sense knows better than to express a critical opinion about the work of Terry McMillan in gender-mixed company. McMillan's legion of female readers fiercely protect her, unafraid to speak at length and at the drop of a hat about her gifts and her relevance. Male validation is unnecessary.

Sometimes that level of loyalty gets delightfully loud. Attending an Atlanta screening of the film version of Waiting to Exhale several years ago, I witnessed the largely female audience actively participating, peppering the on-screen dialogue with "Tell the truth!" and "Amen, sister!" Sunday morning church services blended with Friday night cineplex previews. At McMillan's bookstore appearances, too, women have been known to testify during the question-and-answer periods, joyously, tearfully remembering the discovery in McMillan's novels of women like themselves: strong and vulnerable, delicate and determined, flawed and fabulous.

In A Day Late and a Dollar Short, the four Price women are complicated and conflicted, seemingly unable to figure out ways to express their love for one another or the men in their lives without bumping up against family ghosts and assorted personal baggage. Intimacy remains illusory. Echoing the four female voices of Waiting to Exhale, the Price women face some familiar challenges, including health, finances, children, spouses, infidelity, and career options. But a departure awaits, as McMillan flexes her fictional muscles, including several strong male characters who boldly claim equal time.

Although McMillan has employed a male voice before in Disappearing Acts, where Franklin alternated with Zora to tell the tale, it always felt more like a woman's story. In A Day Late and a Dollar Short, family patriarch Cecil Price and his only son, Lewis, are equal to the task of getting a word in edgewise among all those fast-talking women. The male characters are as fully realized, as complex and as capable of growth and transformation, as any of the women.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short is, ultimately, about those transformations. It's about the healing power of family forgiveness, even when it comes to the wounds that go back to when Mama didn't love you enough or Daddy wasn't paying attention or your little sister got to ride in the front seat while you had to squeeze in the back. In McMillan's novel, those old hurts are batted back and forth among the characters so often that sometimes it is a struggle to see the whole picture and, therefore, the whole truth. In this, the reader's journey is similar to the one taken by the Price family itself, requiring us, like them, to take one step back for every two steps forward, but promising great rewards if we just commit.

When Viola's family gathers on Thanksgiving to share the letters she has written each one, absolving them of all crimes, real or imagined, the book signals a transition for McMillan, as well as for her characters. In A Day Late and a Dollar Short, she seems to have decided that forgiveness is preferable to harsher judgments, especially in matters of the heart. Where this kinder, gentler worldview will ultimately lead McMillan's female characters is still a mystery. For the moment, it seems enough that they can simply forgive, forget, and, finally, exhale.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Las Vegas, 1994. The Prices are introduced by Viola, the family's matriarch: Her husband, Cecil, and their four adult kids, scattered across the country, seem determined to send her to her grave, or at least to the hospital with worrying. Paris is divorced, mother to a nearly seventeen-year-old son, a successful businesswoman and the one who always comes to everybody's rescue. Lewis is the scapegoat - his troubles keep landing him in jail, which only seems to confirm what his family thinks he is. Out in Chicago, Charlotte knows she's gotten the short en of the stick, has "nothing in common except blood" with her parents and siblings and would just as soon divorce them all. Janelle, the baby of the family, is not only on the defensive about the course of her own life and the man she's recently married but she's also facing a new crisis with her teenage daughter that threatens more than she's willing to admit.

With her hallmark exuberance and a cast of characters so sassy, resilient, and full of life that they breathe, dream, and shout right off the page, Terry McMillan has given a tour-de-force novel of family. Healing, and redemption.

FROM THE CRITICS

Essence

A valentine to the power and beauty of black families and the indestructible bond that holds us together.

Undoubtedly, McMillan's finest novel to date...a delicious family saga...McMillan has an uncanny ability to render family conflict with both humor and compassion...a life-affirming read...a triumph.

Los Angeles Times

Undoubtedly, McMillan's finest novel to date...a delicious family saga...McMillan has an uncanny ability to render family conflict with both humor and compassion...a life-affirming read...a triumph.

People

Touching and funny.

Chicago Tribune