A Taste of Reality is not the first book I’ve read that centers on a sassy black heroine who’s making her way in life despite relationship and career issues. It is, however, the first one I have intensely disliked, owing to a selfish, two-faced heroine, a sagging plot, and some very confused race issues. If Terry McMillan’s excellent Waiting to Exhale is the measuring stick of this type of book, then A Taste of Reality is nothing but a cheap knock-off.

Anise and David have been married for a number of years, and though they have all the outward trappings of success – a beautiful home, expensive cars, and a good income – they are foundering in a sea of resentment and simmering tension. David wants Anise to quit her job and stay home, bearing babies and basically being a credit to his upwardly mobile ambitions. Anise, however, made it clear from the beginning that she never wanted to quit her job at local firm Reed Myers. Anise refuses to entertain any notion of her staying home and won’t listen to David’s complaints, while he is sick of her constant bitterness about her place of work when he would be happy for her to stay at home.

Anise has bigger fish to fry, however. Six months ago, Anise was passed over at her firm for a promotion, which was then handed to a less-qualified white man. Now that same job is being re-advertised and she is determined to put herself forward, knowing that she is the best qualified person for the job, and certain that if she is rejected it will be due to her gender and color. Anise’s main competitor for the position is a less-qualified but white ass-kisser named Kelli. Anise’s bosses, Jim and Lyle, though good at putting on the appearance of tolerant affability, are secretly the most ignorant and seedy bosses you’d ever chance to meet, and it takes all Anise’s powers of tongue biting to remain cordial to them. While most of the novel is written in first person narrative, we have the occasional foray into the worlds of Jim and Lyle, and it is not pleasant to say the least.

Anise is worried enough at the prospect of fighting this blatant discrimination, but when she overhears her husband having an intimate conversation with another woman, she feels her world is coming to an end. This is made worse by the fact that, just nights ago, she threw herself at him in an effort to reconcile. Anise is humiliated by the knowledge that he only slept with her to placate her, all the while carrying on with another woman.

After Anise’s marriage plummets, she finds herself rejecting the enamored Frank Colletti, a colleague to whom she is attracted. She has plenty of other reasons to avoid from Frank: it would be unprofessional, it would technically be adultery, and oh yes, Frank is an oily character who pushes a susceptible Anise into a relationship. But Anise’s only real problem with Frank is that he’s white. Quite frankly, many of my issues with the book have to do directly with race. The author’s creation of seedy, super-evil white bosses was laid on so thick they seemed like caricatures rather than people. In this book it seemed as though all white men are evil, lecherous racists and all white women are airheaded sluts. You can imagine the reaction Anise gets when she announces her beau is white. But the author seems an equal-opportunity racist; most of the novel’s blacks are just as anti-white as the whites are shown to be prejudiced against blacks. As a result I was left in a state of utter confusion about whom the author expected the reader to warm to, who was supposed to rescue the novel from its utter negativity – it certainly wasn’t Anise.

It wasn’t just this book’s racial ethics that I questioned. Anise’s character was called into question repeatedly. Her close colleague Lorna complains of sexual harassment at work, and urges Anise to go forward with her charge of discrimination in the hopes that the evil Jim will be punished for his misdeeds. Anise, however, goes her own way, disregarding anyone’s feelings but her own. Also, when she decides to stand up to Jim and Lyle, she agrees to a date with Frank hoping he’ll get her the necessary proof of their underhanded tactics, unconcerned at the fact that not only could he lose his job, but also that she is treading all over his own obvious feelings for her. Yes, she confesses later, but it doesn’t rescue her integrity in my opinion.

The final nail in this novel was a depressing shock twist in the ending. I imagine the author included it because nothing much unpredictable had happened previously. But writing the twist totally ruined the only thing that could have redeemed the heroine. Anise’s habit of thinking only of herself renders her an untouchable, that rare breed of heroine who is utterly and completely unlikable.

The novel also lost points for the often tedious and minute detail that went into everyday interactions that served to slow the pace of the novel, reminding me of an acquaintance who could talk for half an hour on the subject of ordering fries with her burger. Yawn. There’s not much to like in this mess of unlikable characters and murky ethics; I recommend that readers pass this one by.