As reality TV, with its relentless focus on the ordinary, has gone from strength to strength, it was only a matter of time before an equivalent emerged in the world of publishing.
Billed by Picador as "the East End minimalist", Smith has been feted as a fresh voice of the metropolitan working-class.
Her pedestrian, low-brow, unperceptive prose has struck a chord with the so-bad-it's-good brigade. Cue ironic sniggers all round as My Holidays, her third book, provides us with yet more vignettes from what one critic has dubbed The Diary of a Nobody for the 21st century.
Marking a departure from her usual stomping ground: the world of dodgy bedsits, crap dates and dead-end jobs, this travel memoir proves that while you can take the girl out of the East End, you can't take the East End out of the girl.
Whether she's in Rome or Ilfracombe, Smith's horizons are resolutely limited. Witness: "I found Majorca to be a warm and sunny island with a clear blue sea and friendly people."
Writing about the mundane is not a worthless pursuit per se, but it does require imagination, skill and flair. Smith copiously lacks all three.
VIVIENNE MORGAN
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