A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Terry McMillan, 2001
★ 4.11 from 9.1k ratings on Goodreads
Contemporary fiction Literary fiction
A mother and her four grown children each tell their own version of the same family — money, grudges, love — in voices that keep talking back to each other. Four voices talk back and forth with plain warmth, humor, and defiance, and the pace stays conversational even when old grudges surface.
Feels like tenderness, humor and defiance. About family and love.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy messy family stories told in distinct first-person voices that mix tenderness with blunt humor. Some readers find the pacing repetitive and the cursing or unlikeable behavior hard to take.
Why read it
McMillan gives you a lived-in portrait of a mother and her grown children, letting each voice correct the others as humor and tenderness cut through money and grudges.
A page from the book
What a mother calls worrying, her children call meddling.
Can’t nobody tell me nothing I don’t already know. At least not when it comes to my kids. They all grown, but in a whole lotta ways they still act like children. I know I get on their nervesbut they get on mine, tooand they always accusing me of meddling in their business, but, hell I’m their mother. It’s my job to meddle. What I really do is worry. About all four of ‘em. Out loud. If I didn’t love ‘em, I wouldn’t care two cents about what they did or be the least bit concerned about what happens to ‘em. But I do. Most of the time they can’t see what they doing, so I just tell ‘em what I see. What readers say
Readers find the family dynamics deeply relatable and often funny, with multiple perspectives that make the characters feel real. Many also describe tears, touching endings, and some frustration with repetitive pacing, cursing, or unlikeable behavior.
Terry McMillan.McMillan hand-sold her 1987 debut Mama to bookstores herself after it was barely reviewed; Waiting to Exhale then spent months on the bestseller list.
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Questions readers ask
- Is A Day Late and a Dollar Short for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy messy family stories told in distinct first-person voices that mix tenderness with blunt humor. Some readers find the pacing repetitive and the cursing or unlikeable behavior hard to take.
- What is A Day Late and a Dollar Short like?
- Four voices talk back and forth with plain warmth, humor, and defiance, and the pace stays conversational even when old grudges surface. Feels like tenderness, humor and defiance. About family and love.
- What should I read after A Day Late and a Dollar Short?
- If you liked A Day Late and a Dollar Short, try Just for the Summer (Abby Jimenez), Special Delivery (Danielle Steel) and Without Merit (Colleen Hoover).
A taste of the feed
Some people spend years being told their needs are too many.
You’re not asking too much,“ he said. ”You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.
Just for the Summer · Abby Jimenez
The difference between never being alone and never being lonely.
There had been women since, lots of them, to fill the nights and the days. In the dozen years since her death, he had hardly ever been alone, not physically anyway, but he had never loved another woman either, nor did he want to. As far as he was concerned, loving was far too painful. At fifty-nine, Jack Watson had everything he had ever wanted: a business that seemed to do nothing but grow and crank out money.
Special Delivery · Danielle Steel
What it feels like when the world stops holding you up.
I used to feel like i was on the top of the world. Then one day, i noticed that it felt like i was no longer on the top of the world. I was just floating around inside of it. And then eventually, it felt like the world was on top of me.
Without Merit · Colleen Hoover
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