08 November 2013
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Bad Sex Awards shortlist announced
Dead folk singer Woody Guthrie has been shortlisted for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award ...
Dead folk singer Woody Guthrie has been shortlisted for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award
Given for especially excruciating depictions of sex in fiction, it's the prize no writer wants to win.
Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy narrowly escaped being shortlisted as the description of Bridget's encounter with an army office was deemed merely mauve in comparison with the luridly purple passages from:
• Woody Guthrie, House of Earth
And inside the door of her womb she felt her inner organs and tissues, all her muscles and glands, felt them roll, squeeze, squeeze, and roll
• William Nicolson, Motherland
‘So are we going to do it, Lawrence?’
‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Yes.’
‘Doesn’t the Catholic Church say it’s wrong?’
• Manil Suri, The City of Devi
We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.
• Rupert Thomson, Secrecy
I saw flowers. Huge mauve and yellow flowers, all massed together, and falling slowly through the air —’
‘When you hit your head?’
I laughed again. ‘No, before. When I was inside you.
• Matthew Reynolds: The World Was All Before Them
She stirred and her breath became a moan as endorphinergic and morphinergic mechanisms spluttered into life.
• Susan Choi, My Education
Martha, in dismantling me, dredged a voice out of me I did not know I owned; the devastation of my pleasure surged outward and outward again, like an ocean-floor tremour, while that voice I had never imagined was bellowing harshly oh GOD, oh GOD, OHGODOHGOD! – and it was then that Martha finally flung herself onto my shore
• Jonathan Grimwood, The Last Banquet
I found the Brie and broke off a fragment, sucking her nipple through it.
• Eric Reinhardt, The Victoria System
I waited, teased, tortured, for Victoria's palms to start descending once again to the elastic of my underwear.
The lucky winner will be announced on 3 December.
Given for especially excruciating depictions of sex in fiction, it's the prize no writer wants to win.
Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy narrowly escaped being shortlisted as the description of Bridget's encounter with an army office was deemed merely mauve in comparison with the luridly purple passages from:
• Woody Guthrie, House of Earth
And inside the door of her womb she felt her inner organs and tissues, all her muscles and glands, felt them roll, squeeze, squeeze, and roll
• William Nicolson, Motherland
‘So are we going to do it, Lawrence?’
‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Yes.’
‘Doesn’t the Catholic Church say it’s wrong?’
• Manil Suri, The City of Devi
We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.
• Rupert Thomson, Secrecy
I saw flowers. Huge mauve and yellow flowers, all massed together, and falling slowly through the air —’
‘When you hit your head?’
I laughed again. ‘No, before. When I was inside you.
• Matthew Reynolds: The World Was All Before Them
She stirred and her breath became a moan as endorphinergic and morphinergic mechanisms spluttered into life.
• Susan Choi, My Education
Martha, in dismantling me, dredged a voice out of me I did not know I owned; the devastation of my pleasure surged outward and outward again, like an ocean-floor tremour, while that voice I had never imagined was bellowing harshly oh GOD, oh GOD, OHGODOHGOD! – and it was then that Martha finally flung herself onto my shore
• Jonathan Grimwood, The Last Banquet
I found the Brie and broke off a fragment, sucking her nipple through it.
• Eric Reinhardt, The Victoria System
I waited, teased, tortured, for Victoria's palms to start descending once again to the elastic of my underwear.
The lucky winner will be announced on 3 December.
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