Each year Britain's Literary Review honors a mainstream author with "The Bad Sex In Fiction Award." The award goes to writers whose descriptions of sexual antics and activity inspire "eye-rolling and disgust."
This year, Rowan Somerville won the award for descriptions in his book, "The Shape of Her." Passages like the following secured him the honor:
Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.
As if that wasn't good enough to secure the best of the bad prize, elsewhere in the book Somerville describes a nipple as "the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night."
Some other big literary names were on the list of nominees, including Jonathan Franzen for his book Freedom which included the following passage:
One afternoon, as Connie described it, her excited clitoris grew to be eight inches long, a protruding pencil of tenderness with which she gently parted the lips of his penis and drove herself down to the base of its shaft. Another day, at her urging, Joey described to her the sleek warm neatness of her turds as they slid from her anus and fell into his open mouth, where, since these were only words, they tasted like excellent, dark chocolate.
Another nominee was Adam Ross for descriptions in his book, Mr. Peanut. Including a passage where a husband describes his love for his wife's "giganticness" and said if he made love to her from behind he felt like "an X-rated Gulliver among the Brobdingnags." Ross writes,
She was not his wife but a giant she-creature, an overlarge sex pet: his to screw, groom and maintain.
In accepting the award, Somerville was gracious and stated that he felt it was fitting because, "There is nothing more English than bad sex."
...continue reading "Bad Sex 2010: Dead Bugs, Pencils & Giant She Creatures"
