cover image I Almost Forgot About You

I Almost Forgot About You

Terry McMillan. Crown, $27 (368p) ISBN 978-1-101-90257-8

McMillan (Who Asked You?) revs up middle age in a rambunctious showcase of the bestselling author’s keen ear for language, clear eye for the give-and-take of sex, love, and commitment, and heartfelt faith in happy endings. Here, 54-year-old optometrist Georgia Young, bored with her work and romantically adrift after two failed marriages, sets out to reinvent herself by examining the loves she left behind—providing a nifty three-step guide for finding “the Right One,” and then moving on when it turns out wrong—taking a train trip to Vancouver and turning a knack for design into a career. Meanwhile, the real work of Georgia’s life bustles all around her: her crazy-in-love 81-year-old mother, two best and brutally honest friends, and two daughters tentatively embarking on their own complicated lives—an expertly drawn cast of characters that includes the perfect foils for the alternately quixotic and practical Georgia. “Love doesn’t have an age limit, and it can find you at any time in your life,” she tells her 22-year-old daughter. “It can also just as soon leave you in a ditch... You can be a woman and be happy without a man and without love.” There’s no better guide than McMillan for this excursion through early-, middle-, and old-age crises, and no better creator of female characters who refuse to give up on dreaming, or looking back to find the way forward in their noisy, messy, joyous lives. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Literary Agency. (June)