How we plan to cover the Booker Prize news amid a very busy month on the culture desk

I was convinced Sally Rooney's 'Normal People' would be a shoo-in, but she didn't make the cut

If April is the cruellest month, then October is perhaps the busiest – at least in the arts world. From the London Film Festival to the usual spate of major new plays and TV dramas, there’s precious little respite for a culture journalist around this time of year. Next week we'll be covering the announcement of the winner of the Booker Prize, an award that has been the subject of much discussion on our desk since the shortlist was revealed on 20 September.

I was convinced Sally Rooney's Normal People would be a shoo-in; so, too, were the bookies, with whom she was the 3-1 favourite. And for good reason: with her follow-up to Conversations with Friends, the 27-year-old found beauty in its sparseness, deftly tracing the vicissitudes of a charged, unconventional relationship. In our five-star review, our critic Catherine Humble wrote: “Where Conversations... gets under your skin, this hits you deep in the marrow, and the result is quite astonishing.”

And yet somehow it didn't make the cut, which Holly Baxter lamented in a terrific article on the day the shortlist was announced.