My trusted source of recommendations most decidedly did NOT recommend this book, but I admit that I liked it far better than her.

That being said, despite the wonderfully poignant moments that expose the complications interracial relations in London, the book felt very scattered. Divided into sections, each portion of the novel primarily focuses on one individual in a small circle of relevant characters. The sections also (more or less) progress in chronological order over fifty years, so the later sections include the children of the characters in the first two. The novel starts and ends with Archie, who is unfortunately the flattest character (ironically the least prejudiced it should be noted). He is largely useless throughout the two thirds of the book until the last few pages, which finally reveal a moment that happened to him from fifty years past. Such a move, awarding the significance allotted to the novel's last moments, suggests an importance to an event that has really had nothing to do with the story as a whole. And paired with the way in which Smith abandons all the tension she built over the last third of the novel with Archie's daughter, it leaves to wonder (alternately) what was the point of the first part of the story, or the second, because neither are followed through with due diligence. Which is not to say that I want to immediately write this work off as a failure for its untidy nature. Especially in light of the insightful moments sprinkled throughout the text, the abrupt end (with rather disappointing summaries for the characters I'd just become interested in) gives me pause, encourages me to look back and re-examine what the novel is about. Except that I feel that I should already know long before the last chapter.
Another note of contention is something I do in my own writing: address the reader as the author, 2nd person, extra-diagetic, a stepping away from the narrative at hand to explain . . . something writing faculty everywhere would tell you is a mark of an amateur, craftlessness. I'm not so sure I'm willing to go that far; these "missteps" often included ponderous sentiments that I rather enjoyed thinking about, but then again Smith is preaching to the choir to me. I'm sure I'd be less forgiving if I didn't feel cynical about the way culture constructs racial identity.

All in all despite what seems to be just a scattering of events colored by a wide variety of character perspectives, I still recommend the read solely because of its examination of the perpetuation of our beliefs about culture, progress, and the "other."