Bad Sex Award 2010

Rowan Somerville was declared the winner of the eighteenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award  The prize was awarded for passages from his second novel, The Shape of Her.

'There is nothing more English than bad sex,' said Somerville, whose first novel, The End of Sleep, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. 'So on behalf of the nation, I thank you.'

The clincher for the judges were sentences such as: "Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her" and a female body part “upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing the night” and how one character “twisted onto her belly like a fish flipping itself”.

Alastair Campbell's second novel Maya, in which a character imagines that "the walls were going to fall down as we stroked and screamed our way through hours of pleasure to the union for which my whole life had been a preparation" apparently gave stiff competition to the winner.

But the judges' excitement subsided when they noticed his "vocal enthusiasm for winning" the award. The Bad Sex award, after all, is intended to discourage lurid writing and not meant to encourage it. Tony Blair's former spin doctor was also nominated in 2008 for his first novel, All in the Mind.

Mr Cambell's former boss Tony Blair's The Journey could well have become the first non-fiction book ever nominated to the prize, but the judges finally decided against including it in the shortlist after concluding that the excruciatingly unforgettable description in his autobiography, of himself with his wife Cherie on the night of 12 May 1994: "I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct" was much too brief

The full shortlist other than the winner:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books)
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Atlantic Books)
Maya by Alastair Campbell (Hutchinson)
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee (Constable & Robinson)
Heartbreak by Craig Raine (Atlantic Books)
Mr Peanut by Adam Ross (Jonathan Cape)

Last year's winner was The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell (Chatto & Windus).

The Bad Sex award, set up by the literary critic Rhoda Koenig and the late editor of the  Literary Review, Auberon Waugh, in 1993 "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it. The prize is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature, and is limited to the literary novel".

It may have been started with the lofty aim of "gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels," but over the years, the award has created enough of a buzz around it.

The Winning Passage
The Shape of Her by Rowan Somerville

He caught her rhythm, pulling and releasing, cradling and crushing; pushing up through his fingers with each swing, mining up, like an otter through wet sand. Her sounds shifted from moans to grunts, insistent, almost desperate cries from the throat … He unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night. He took it between his lips and sucked the salt from her. He hooked his fingers into her waistband, caught the elastic of her underwear and began pulling down. The knot on her light cotton trousers held fast as the fabric reached the curve of her backside. She twisted from him and stepped back.

'I want to suck you,' she said, descending … She loosed his trousers, pulled away his underwear and gripped him with fingers tender enough to hold a tiny bird.

As he felt her mouth's engulfment, he acquiesced, disappointment melting like ice in hot cream.

***

Naked from waist to toe, a faint wedge of paleness from a few hours of sun, streaked with shadows in the candlelight; the triangle of pubic hair, blond, a thin line bunched darkly, like desert vegetation following an underground stream. He placed his hand on the concave stretch that was her belly, letting two fingers rest in the yawn of her navel. He slipped downwards, grazing the tight skin of her waist with his fingertips. He reached her hair line and the muscles of her belly hardened as she raised herself up onto her elbows. She stayed his hand and drew him, yanked him, into a smothering kiss. She released his hair from her fingers and twisted onto her belly like a fish flipping itself, her movement so brusque his chin bounced off her head.

He grasped the side of her hips, pushed her away and pulled her to him with a slap. Again and again with more force and velocity. Tine pressed her face deeper into the cushion grunting into the foam at each thrust.

The wet friction of her, tight around him, the sight of her open, stretched around him, the cleft of her body, it tore a climax out of him with a final lunge. Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.

 Other Contenders

Maya by Alastair Campbell (Hutchinson)

the walls were going to fall down as we stroked and screamed our way through hours of pleasure to the union for which my whole life had been a preparation

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate)

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.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books)

standing up, her skirt bunched around her ankles, his jeans pulled down to his knees, moaning into each other, the drug keeping him hard and allowing him to forestall climaxing

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Atlantic Books)

The rain falls in black cords, lashing my animals, my men, and my wife, Pythias, who last night lay with her legs spread while I took notes on the mouth of her sex, who weeps silent tears of exhaustion now, on this tenth day of our journey.

Heartbreak by Craig Raine (Atlantic Books)

The arsehole’s café au lait. Its spicy Lebkuchen taste. Her rank ragged furrow. Its exciting ugliness.

Mr Peanut by Adam Ross (Jonathan Cape).

She was not his wife but a giant she-creature, an overlarge sex pet: his to screw, groom, and maintain.