Irish author wins bad sex prize, in the written sense

NOTE TO MYSELF: SOME PEOPLE WIN PRIZES FOR BAD SEX - IN FICTION


The object of writing and/or authoring a book is for people to read it and for the book to be noticed. In this case, the book was definitely noticed but not for the usual reasons.

Irish author, Rowan Somerville, was awarded the "Bad Sex in Fiction" prize for his novel, "The Shape of Her."

A sample of the writing says it all:

“Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her."

What can one say, comment or write after reading such - um - uniquely-expressed words? In winning the award, Somerville beat British Columbia author, Annabel Lyon, who was nominated for her book, "The Golden Mean, which explored the relationship between Aristotle and a young Alexander the Great. Sure - why not. Sounds good to me.

Last year's winner was "The Kindly Ones" by American author Jonathan Littell, which described a sex act as "a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg." Oh my...

The annual award was created 18 years ago by the British literary magazine, Literary Review, to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".

To see a list of other finalists, drop by here:
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html