Taken for Granted - Book Review

Black Issues Book Review, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Janine Gardner

by Earl Sewell BET/Sepia, November 2002 $13.00, ISBN 1-583-14357-2

What do you do when you wake up one morning and realize that the person you are married to isn't the person you once knew? In Earl Sewell's novel Taken for Granted, readers contemplate that very question.

Nina Epps is a beautiful, fitness guru who is also an accountant. Sorry that she married at such a young age and didn't enjoy being single, Nina decides her life needs a change. Her husband, Jay, is a couch potato whose biggest thrill is going out to eat. Theirs is a relationship that Nina has outgrown, as she distances herself from the man she once clung to as a naive, scared young girl. Unappreciated, Nina longs for a man who will give her the attention, romance and excitement she's been missing for 20 years.

Enter Richard Vincent, a handsome dentist who is a member of Nina's aerobics class. Richard has marital problems, as well. Tied down to his wife, Estelle, and her con-artist mother and call-girl sister, Richard is drowning in debt because of his wife's underhanded schemes. Once he was easily appeased by Estelle's manipulative sex, now he has had enough.

Though the two present an appealing package, Sewell is careful not to make their love story a complete fairy tale. The book makes clear that marriage is not an easy thing to walk away from and that there are consequences affecting more than just two people in love. Sewell's writing is clear and concise, and he has a solid grasp of how to weave each character's individual story into one. Taken for Granted offers readers of contemporary fiction another enjoyable book to add to their list.

--Janine Gardner is a BIBR editor.