At only 100 pages, it won't take you long to get through Assembly. What will take longer is trying to shake it out of your brain.
It's remarkable, but I'm not sure I know (or can properly articulate) why.

Ali Smith has called it 'a quiet, measured call to revolution...This is the kind of book that doesn't just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible.' So...no pressure...

Her unnamed black female narrator appears to get everything she’s striven for: a big promotion at her finance firm and further initiation into her boyfriend’s world of white, old-money privilege via a garden party.

Racism (overt, implied, legacy, establishment and positive discrimination) affects the narrator’s life, from all-out abuse from strangers, via colleagues who believe she has it easy thanks to “diversity”, to recognising how her presence gives her boyfriend a “certain liberal credibility”. And that's before she's diagnosed with cancer and decides not to have treatment.

It's a blistering, diamond-sharp book. Highly recommended.