No Mitchell? The Books desk's sharp intake of breath was surely echoed throughout the bookerverse when today's Man Booker shortlist was announced. David Mitchell's failure to make the cut is the first shock of the announcement. The omission of Christos Tsiolkas's much talked about The Slap is the second.

However, the list isn't without controversy. Emma Donoghue's Room - the Josef Fritzl-prompted tale of Jack and his Ma which Sarah Crown and I loved but didn't dare expect to see on the shortlist is there, as is Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room, a book which treads the boundary between fact and fiction (which Claire Armitstead would like to put her money on but feels may not be enough of a "novel" for the purists). Tom McCarthy's modernist, experimental C, which has received a mix of adulatory and baffled reviews, is also still a contender - as, perhaps surprisingly, is two-time former winner Peter Carey with Parrot and Olivier in America - a book which he feels is his best yet.

They're joined in the running by Andrea Levy's The Long Song, and Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question (Lindesay Irvine, who profiled Jacobson recently, is pleased that a consistently brilliant and entertaining novelist is making his first appearance on the shortlist). Sarah was disappointed that Lisa Moore's February and Helen Dunmore's The Betrayal both failed to move on to the next stage.

While the presence of C and Room have somewhat mollified me after my disappointment about Mitchell, I think it's a shortlist that has not lived up to the promise of the longlist. How about you?

The shortlist in full

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Faber and Faber)

Room by Emma Donoghue (Picador - Pan Macmillan)

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Atlantic Books)

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)

The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Headline Review)

C byTom McCarthy (Jonathan Cape – Random House)