I had a bit of a reading crisis last summer, brought on by reading the third volume of the Raj Quartet and my dad's subsequent comments. It started with me wondering if it was okay for Paul Scott's characters to be racist if the author was critical of them (of course it would be), and expanded into doubt (is he being critical?) and finally questioning (does it matter? the series is good, and it's just one series).
I wrote at the time:

My reflections about this series and Dad's comments about it (latest one: "these books remind me of Gone With the Wind.") is turning into a full-blown reading crisis. And I can't play what I call the Wagner's Music Card (i.e. the fact that he was an anti-Semite shouldn't keep us from liking his music because none of that comes across when we listen to it) since Paul Scott's prejudices (if they are his prejudices--and this rubs against one of my other reading squicks: assuming the author's voice is the voice you hear most clearly in the novel) come across loud and clear.
But, I tell myself, this series was written during the sixties and seventies. It's a product of its time and of its author. Is one troubling facet enough to throw the entire thing off? If that were true, I would feel guilty for liking Jane Eyre (and loving Mr. Rochester) because of Mr. Rochester's obviously sexist attitudes (which turned me off while reading the obviously-based-on-Jane Eyre Rebecca).
The fact is, everyone's guilty of picking and choosing what they take away from what they read. I love Jane Eyre in spite of its sexism, The Big Sleep in spite of its homophobia, and (apparently) The Raj Quartet in spite of its racism. (And I'm certainly not going to wade into the most controversial picking and choosing people, myself and nearly everyone I know included, do: religious texts written centuries ago.)
Am I okay with this state of affairs? Not by a long shot, and I still have a lot of thinking to do about it. Is that the way it is for now? Yes. Will I finish reading the quartet? You bet.

And I did. And it was great. To rectify the situation further, I decided to read some books about India by Indians, to see what was missing from The Raj Quartet. In Colorado, I read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, and it was fantastic. Nearly all 1,474 pages of it. If you've got the time and the patience, I highly recommend it.