‘‘ZADIE SMITH Syndrome” was a term coined back in the 2000s — possibly by Private Eye but it may have been The Spectator — to describe a novel by an author whose celebrity is such that whatever flaws their book may possess are instantly reimagined as positive virtues.
It derived from a review of Ms Smith’s — written, it scarcely needs saying, by an academic — which, having puzzled itself over various defects and inconsistencies, concluded with some bromides about the novel’s “most interesting ethical endeavour” being
