The critic’s responsibility is to the consumer, not the creator – even if it’s Dolly Alderton

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Alderton’s prose, Pierce notes, is “thick like mayonnaise”, while “her skewering of dating apps surely makes Ghosts the most culturally relevant novel of 2014”. Author Chris McCrudden wrote on Twitter: “How about we give the valuable review space over to books worth reviewing?” Quite how we’d know which books are worth reviewing, he didn’t say. Terri White, editor-in-chief of Empire magazine, commented: “Not liking something isn’t the same as taking great delight in destroying for effect.” Twitter user Kate Holmes agreed: “Review something you like and get jazzed up about that.” The suggestion seemed to be that Pierce’s review of Ghosts should never have been published. Whether or not a critic is “right” is a different discussion entirely – though I suppose if you deem them to have got it “wrong” enough times, you’ll soon find someone else to read instead.