Despite the cataclysmic budget presented to the country by Brian Lenihan yesterday the major talking point in bars and private members clubs across Ireland was the failure of Cecilia Ahern to win the Man Booker prize.

Instead the award was given to Indian author Aravind Adiga for his debut novel ‘The white tiger’. It tells the story of Balram, the son of a rickshaw puller, who is taken out of school and made work in a tea shop. It chronicles his struggles to make his way in the world and dig himself out of the life he finds himself in.

Cecilia - they're breaking her heart

Critics have described the prose as ‘astonishing’ and ‘lyrical’ and added to the incredibly poignant narrative it was a well received winner at the Guildhall in London.

But fans of Ireland’s favourite chick-lit author have called for a recount, despite the fact that Ahern was not even nominated to begin with. “It’s a scandal”, said one fan, “her books are so warm and fluffy and with lovely pink colours. It’s ridiculous to think that an Indian writing about another Indian could be more literary than the story of a man and woman and their struggles in love”.

Ahern’s latest novel ‘Thanks for the memories’ tells the story of a man who dies of penis cancer but romantically arrranges for his Gmail account to send her an email a month for a year to tell her how much he loves her.

It follows on from ‘PS I love you’ where the dead husband sent 12 letters and ‘A place called here’ where the husband dies and sends his wife messages of devotion by carrier pigeons which are released from an attic by a hunchback he befriended in his childhood, who eventually finds true love with the wife after she sees the man beneath the hump.

In her upcoming work she is reinventing the entire genre, according to her hyperbolic publishers. “The new one is a complete departure and fans are going to love it”, said Gwyneth Murphy-Mendacious of Harper Collins. “In ‘My lips are sealed’, a wife dies during a vaginaplasty, but sensing something isn’t quite right with the back street plastic surgeon she has opted to use she arranges for her husband to be sent a telegram every month with a moving haiku she has written all by herself. Nobody has ever done anything like this before. It’s going to take the market by storm. Seriously, people can’t get enough of this tripe”.

Representatives of the Man Booker prize merely scoffed in a haughty manner when contacted by the Irish Sentinel last night to ask them about this apparent snub.

Former Irish winners of the prize include Anne Enright for her bleak and depressing ‘The Gathering’, John Banville for his tedious and undreadable ‘The Sea’ and Brian McFadden’s ‘Pusminge’, his account of his short-lived marriage to Kerry Katona.