Kevin is right about expectations after this many prizes.

I’m thinking it comes down to Wolf Hall and Lark and Termite (this is me being an ex-journalist, reading entrails, not me being a reader, saying which book I think is best). The NBCC, like other U.S. prize juries, does seem to like “big” books (see last year’s winner) which suggests Wolf Hall. On the other hand, American juries tend to disrespect UK juries (and vice versa, I hasten to add) so the Booker win probably stands against it.

Lark and Termite comes from an established, but perhaps somewhat underrecognized author, and deals with issues that are very relevant to contemporary America. I’d say that will get it the nod.

Those observations, of course, virtually ensure that one of the other three books will win.

The Cheever book will live long in the memory. I’m fascinated by the lives of writers in any case, but a kind of fetish for charting the labyrinths of despair and debauchery almost de rigeur for most of my favourite writers began with Capote and continues to hold me in somewhat macabre thrall. I guess, to boil it down: I like to know that my heroes are susceptible to the same weaknesses and foibles, that these vaunted talents are human and, occasionally, utterly crackers. It makes it more interesting – my theory has always been that true insight and brilliance tends to be a corollary of a nightmarish flipside.

Kelman is not to everyone’s taste but your reading of it fascinates me all the more that you are wary!

I’m currently reading Offshore, which is the first Booker winner I’ve read since 2008. I’ve read over half of them, so my neglect hasn’t been for lack of paying attention to all things Booker. But 2008 was a bad year for me, Bookerwise. You know how it is when you eat something that makes you sick — no matter how much you loved it beforehand, it is unpalatable for quite a while afterwards, if not forever. And it’s irrational and unfair. I hope that the Fitzgerald shows that I am recovering.

Thanks for the encouragement about Cheever — its heft makes such encouragement almost a necessity for me. And I hope you keep enjoying Team of Rivals, surely one of the most influential biographies of the last decade given how Obama based some of his staffing decisions on its premise. A great book.

On the Booker winners, your thoughts on all interest me, but one in particular I look forward to you reading, Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late.

Kevin, I am firmly entrenched in your minority. I accept that it is a daring feat and an admirable pursuit, but I don’t accept that Wolf Hall is a great book, less still the best of the year. Mind you, my favourites for the Booker never win! Apart from Vernon God Little which I now find problematic, though still effervescent and wonderfully inventive. Hell, my favourites scarcely make the shortlist.