McMillan misses groove with 'I Almost Forgot About You'

When does a groove become a rut?

Terry McMillan, best-selling author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, returns to familiar lovelorn territory in her newest novel, I Almost Forgot About You (Crown, 368 pp., ** out of four stars).

Georgia Young, a successful ophthalmologist living in a chic Bay Area home, is nearing 55 with no romance in her life, two ex-husbands, two grown daughters, two granddaughters and a longing for something more. When a new patient leads Georgia to discover that one of her past loves has died, she vows to revisit her significant exes to thank them for their time together and see what she has learned from the relationships.

McMillan is funny and frank about men, women and sex. Her summaries of Georgia’s marriages and major love connections — “this is what he gave me” — are powerful and poetic. Georgia’s exes and romantic possibilities go by in a blur: Handsome, fit, well-dressed men with pillowy lips and thin mustaches. Just like us, Georgia has a type — or does she?

Everybody wants a happy ending and Georgia’s happy ever after is so ridiculously romantic that it feels churlish to criticize other aspects of this novel.

But there are things about Georgia that are downright unpleasant. Talking about her two best friends, Georgia is pretty harsh. Wealthy Wanda is “cheap as hell, can’t dress to save her life, and doesn’t buy anything unless it’s on sale.” Sports attorney Violet was “a legal slut” who lost clients as a result of sleeping with so many athletes in pursuit of business, but this “hasn’t stopped her from dressing like one.”

Georgia greets her pals as “huzzy” and “ho.” You don’t need the Urban Dictionary to know these aren’t flattering familiarities. So women who like sex are hos and men who like sex are — men. Ladies and gents of the literary world — and the world in general — may we please retire this tired trope?

A longtime, charming patient dies, and that news is telegraphed with a sad-face emoticon. Has it come to this, that an author who can write with such warmth and understanding succumbs to the cheapness of the emoji? McMillan’s fans deserve better.

Georgia’s mother is one of the better characters, engaged to a courtly gentleman at 81 and full of life and advice for her fierce but foundering daughter. Georgia’s officemates are quirky and endearing, but a neighbor’s struggle with alcohol that threatens her marriage is dispatched with the depth of a sitcom episode.

Cheers to McMillan for writing about the possibility of late-life reinvention. But I Almost Forgot is pretty forgettable.