'Tis the Season to Celebrate Bad Sex in Fiction

'Tis the season to be jolly, and the British Literary Journal's 2019 "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" has just come out to provide needed end-of-year chuckles. The annual award goes to sex scenes that miss the mark to evoke mirth, cringes or head-scratching in otherwise well-written fictional works by notable authors. This year the judges actually split top "honors" between two authors: Prix Goncourt winner Didier Decoin and British novelist John Harvey. Decoin won for passages in his novel The Office of Gardens and Ponds, a fable set in Japan 1,000 years ago, by describing, for example, how the heroine "seized, kneaded, massaged, squashed and crushed" (Ow!) her lover's genitalia and "felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws." Meanwhile, Harvey floundered erotically with passages in his novel Pax, such as a clunky connection of sexual and geographic heat with "More than torrid, more than tropical: they two were riding the equator," or an unappetizing allusion to a female praying mantis devouring her mate "mouthful by mouthful." A runner-up contender was The River Capture by Mary Costello, who turned sexual penetration into a weird anatomical exploration: "She begged him to go deeper and, no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection." Elizabeth Gilbert, popular author of Eat, Pray, Love, also made the short list by having her heroine proclaim in City of Girls, "I screamed as though I were being run over by a train." (Holy Ow!) For those who get excited by step-by-step direction, try Domenic Smith's The Electric Hotel: "The actual lovemaking was a series of cryptic clues and concealed pleasures. A sensual treasure hunt. She asked for something, then changed her mind. He made adjustments and calibrations, awaited further instruction." For more excerpts, see https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/27/mouthful-by-mouthful-the-2019-bad-sex-award-in-quotes