Dubious

Irish Author Wins Bad Sex Award

Character did it “like a leipdopterist.”

So is this good for a writer’s sex life? The 18th annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award has been given to Rowan Somerville, an Irish author. Somerville beat Jonathan Franzen, Christos Tsiolkas, and former Labour Party flack Alistair Campbell, among others, to win the questionable title, which both celebrates and ridicules outlandish, lurid sex writing in modern fiction. One sentence in particular caught judges’ eyes: “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin, he screwed himself into her.” Past honorees have included Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and John Updike, who was given a lifetime achievement award after being nominated four times. “There is nothing more English than bad sex,” said the Irishman Somerville, “So on behalf of the entire nation, I would like to thank you.”