This week, The Literary Review will award its annual Bad Sex Award to the novelist responsible for publishing the year’s worst depiction of sexual intercourse.
What makes for terrible fictionalized sex In some cases, it’s the deployment of delusional metaphor, as in 2013 nominee Manil Suri’s 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.”
Congratulations-you f***d.
Other times, crass accessories are to blame, as in Jonathan Grimood’s The Last Banquet: “I found the Brie and broke off a fragment, sucking her nipple through it.” (Another reason to never bring Brie to a dinner party).
And sometimes-as in Woody Guthrie’s long-lost 1947 novel House of Earth, which was just published this year-the honour goes to a particularly horrifying interpretation of basic human anatomy.
Guthrie writes: “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, and felt that every inch of her whole being stretched, reached, felt out, felt in, felt all around the shape of his penis.” (If the womb does have a door, it just slammed shut).
There are a lot of ways to write sex wrong. As Susan Choi, nominated this year for her novel My Education, told the Washington Post, “I don’t really know what this [award] means. Is the award for bad sex writing For good writing about bad sex For making good people feel bad about sex I can’t help but think it might widen my audience.”