The Immigrant Experience
Above all else, this is a novel specifically about the experience of being an immigrant in London. Even more specifically: being a black immigrant in London. While there are surely native Britons who have tried to do the same thing the immigrant group is trying to do—raise money for a down payment on a house—the actual details of what is involved in making that happen are definitely not going to be the same for West Indian immigrants as for someone who has moved to London from Scotland or Ireland, much less Liverpool or Manchester.
Upward Mobility
It does not take living long in London for this motley crew of men arrived from poor countries in the Caribbean to buy into the whole idea of upward social mobility that exists in a richer industrialized nation. The entire plot of the novel—if it can be called that—is stimulated by the desire to move from very low-grade rental living conditions up the next step of the social ladder by buying a house. Or, more precisely, putting a down payment on a house. That these men are quite clearly not primed for this responsibility—the buying of a house, much less the caretaking of it—as a result of growing up conditions where social mobility is far more limited in scope and tends to be in a later motion rather than a vertical one is subtly indicative of the fact that industrialized capitalism even as late in the game as the early decades of the second half of the 20th century was not quite as widespread as globalism would later make it.
Magic
In order for this group of men to realize their dream, a certain type of magic is needed. The prevalence of magic begins in the opening paragraph with imagery of Aladdin’s lamp ironically adorning the peeling wallpaper in the rundown apartment where this crazy lark commences. Over the course of the story, the immigrants prove themselves to be utterly incapable of actually doing what is necessary to raise the money for the down payment. Despite this failure, the story has a happy ending which is brought about through a sort of modern-day magic of unlikely coincidence and unforeseen positive consequences of what at the time seem like distinctly negative choices.
