Bad Sex Awards 2013

[Stavros]

Every year the Literary Review chooses passages from a recent novel to illustrate how difficult it is to write about sexual intercourse -the 'Bad Sex' award throws up, as it were, some astonishing attempts, the extracts of which are below.

Literary Review's Bad Sex Award Shortlist Announced: Read Excerpts

The Huffington Post UK | Posted: 07/11/2013 14:18 GMT | Updated: 07/11/2013 14:47 GMT







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Hoorah! The shortlist for Britain's most dreaded literary prize has been announced!
Yes, the winner of Literary Review's 21st annual Bad Sex Award - given to the author of the most egregious passage of sexual description in a novel this year - will be revealed at a ceremony at the Naval & Military Club in London on 3rd December.

This year's shortlist encompasses writers from the USA to India - and it very nearly included Helen Fielding's 'Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy'. Literary Review's judging panel, however, ultimately felt that the heroine’s performance with an ex-army officer – ‘“Oh, oh,” I gasped. “Did they teach you this in the SAS?’” – was not quite cringeworthy enough to merit inclusion.
Previous Bad Sex Award winners include Melvyn Bragg, Sebastian Faulks and A. A. Gill - and the purpose of the prize, says Literary Review, is "to draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it". Despite the flood of post-'Fifty Shades Of Grey' fiction, however, it doesn't include pornographic or expressly erotic literature.




http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "She moves her hips, pushing him deeper into her all the time, and as she does so she whispers, ‘Fuck me now, Lawrence. Fuck me now.’" – 'Motherland' by William Nicholson
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "So magnified and so keen were her feelings that her inner nerves could even feel the bumps, the ridges, the pimples, the few stray hairs along the shaft of his male rod." – 'House of Earth' by Woody Guthrie
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "Weeping we knotted our bodies together, caressing and hushing each other, until we both must have slept, to awake it seemed many hours later, and gaze at each other in mute wonderment. ‘Fuck,’ she said, sitting up. ‘What the fuck time is it?’" – 'My Education' by Susan Choi
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands – only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. 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." – 'The City of Devi' by Manil Suri
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "I closed my eyes as well and moved inside her, imagining the ribbed flesh, the supple rings of muscle. Mauve and yellow flowers filled the blank screen of my eyelids, the petals loosening and drifting downwards on to smooth grey stone. I kissed the soft bristles in the hollow of her armpit, then I kissed the smaller hollow of her clavicle." – 'Secrecy' by Rupert Thomson
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "But phew she too seemed to be surfing the waves of neuromuscular euphoria, so that as, sweating, panting, he bowed his forehead to her chest, she gripped him tight, her sharp nails stabbing; and then they were grinning and kissing each other’s noses, cheeks; and then they lay entangled for a moment, breathing; and then they rose, one after another, went for a piss, came back and settled into bed again." – 'The World Was All Before Them' by Matthew Reynolds
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "In my mouth her nipple turned from strawberry to deep raspberry but the taste I wanted was missing. I had sweat and what had to be soap from washing her dress or herself. Reaching behind me, I found the Brie and broke off a fragment, sucking her nipple through it." – 'The Last Banquet' by Jonathan Grimwood
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "Drops of sweat running down her temples shone through this incandescent lull like crystal ladybirds. I waited, tensed, tortured, for Victoria’s palms to start descending once again towards the elastic of my underwear." – 'The Victoria System' by Eric Reinhardt


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/07/literary-review-bad-sex-award_n_4232295.html

[trish]

I decided to enter the competition. Here's my entry->

The Caped Crusader pushed deeply into tight, girly bottom whereupon Robin screamed, "Holy Fuckin' Bat-for-a-Cock, Batman! That hurt's so good!"

[Stavros]

'Did you hear it, Trish, did you hear it?' he cried in ecstasy. 'Was it Mozart, was it a waltz or a fandango, was it the blessed Bach or the Ride of the Valkyries or the music of the spheres?' She flipped him over and creamed his ass with a wad of swarfeega -'No,' she replied, curtly, 'Take That'. And penetrated the wailing snob, now crushed under the weight of his make-believe orchestra, subsumed by the treble-clefs of his desire, now barely hearing the distant call of the French Horn, a coda to his lunch-break jollies.

[broncofan]

One of the things I've noticed with embarrassing sex passages is that the more precise the description, the more ridiculous it sounds.

I remember Mailer won one of these for describing a penis that refused to get hard as a "coil of excrement". Nothing quite that ridiculous here.

[Stavros]

For those interested, the winner has been announced:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/images/slideshow/quote.png "The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands – only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. 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." – 'The City of Devi' by Manil Suri