Race hate behind the net curtains

Race. Gender. Sexuality. Changing class structure. All the big millennial issues are diligently ticked off by Maggie Gee in her latest book. It's more of a check list than a novel, yet its no-punches-pulled attitude, gamely grappling with the issues

It's something of a parable. Alfred White is the ageing park keeper at Albion Gardens, the council-run recreation ground in ethnically mixed Hillingdon.

He suffers a seizure after a black family (surname unspecified, but there's a good chance it's "Black") walk on the grass. His doting wife, May, and their family friend Thomas tend to him in hospital, where he's visited by their three children: Darren, a workaholic lush who's escaped to America; Shirley, a lady of leisure, on her second black husband; and Dirk, a 25-year-old fascist still living at home.

Each chapter focuses on one or another character. There are a few cute, unexpected bonds between them - Thomas and Shirley, Dirk and Shirley's brother-in-law Winston - but most of their relations swiftly merge into a vague, bitter emotional fug. We hear their grievances until it's time for Alfred to die and Gee to wrap it all up with a heavily signposted final twist.

It wouldn't all be quite so bad had Gee's right-on agenda not led her to over-egg the Whites' prejudices. Alfred and Dirk aren't just bigoted, they're utterly unreconstructed dinosaurs, Alf Garnett's embarrassingly outspoken relatives, racist, sexist, homophobic, unbelievably stupid and profoundly dull. Alfred objects to foreign birds in his aviary, foreign people in his park ("they'd turn it into a jungle") and women speaking "when men were talking about serious things". Dirk is made to spout endless bile spiced with the odd malapropism - "Guardian-reader! Gobbler! Pansy! I hate the voices of people like him. Loving themselves. Too bloody loud. Totally ... self-competent."

And making this socially inept white supremacist a repressed homosexual with a thing for black guys seems a touch too easy.

Gee's an undeniably accomplished, well-versed writer (the back cover proudly informs us that she has a doctorate in the 20th century novel).

Putting her skills to less didactic use pays off - the admirably undynamic portrait of May and Alfred's long marriage is neatly handled. She nicely captures the feel of suburbia, despite also falling prey to the fallacy that it's much more exciting than it seems, every net curtain seething with rage, violence and lust.

None the less, The White Family misfires so badly that it ends up as some sort of apology for racism. Dirk's a maniac, Shirley a doormat and Darren a drunkard because their parents are outmoded working-class folk who don't know any better. There's endless anger, but very little blame. And even less tension - by discarding much chance of moral change you're left with an extended episode of Kilroy.

There's room out there for this kind of book. But this one is far too smug, simplistic and serious-minded, and its attempt to close on a note of noble redemption is a sad bungle of the complex issues at hand.