The Thirteenth Tale

The fact that this first novel by Diane Setterfield was going to be an utter piece of crap should have been foretold by several things; the fact that it was lauded as being good, and it's a best-seller; the photo of the author in the front cover; the way the bookshops were trying to hock it. It is a bland gothic horror story, which is utterly ridiculous, has no sense of existing in any real world. The characters aren't real - the worst of them is the "writer" who writes such terrible purplish prose it's hysterical - and there's no real sense of place and overall it's just silly nonsense. Why, why, why are such books loved when better versions of them exist? Books like this depress me.