Terry McMillan's third novel centers on four professional Black women in their thirties living in Phoenix — Savannah Jackson, Bernadine Harris, Robin Stokes, and Gloria Matthews — whose friendship carries them through disappointing, faithless, or absent men. Bernadine's husband of eleven years leaves her for a white woman as the novel opens; Gloria's life revolves around her son and her salon; Robin cycles through unreliable partners; and Savannah, newly arrived from Denver, is involved with a married man. Told in alternating voices full of humor, frank talk about sex and money, and sharp observation of work and family, the novel is less a search for a perfect man than a portrait of women leaning on one another while they wait, in the title's phrase, to exhale — to stop holding their breath for someone else to complete their lives. A breakthrough bestseller, it reshaped mainstream publishing's sense of the audience for Black women's fiction and was adapted as a successful 1995 film.
Author: Terry McMillan · Original publisher: Viking (New York), 1992
