Thursday 19 November 2015

This Year's Bad Sex in Fiction Shortlist- 2015...

Yes it's that time of year when the shortlist of the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction shortlist is revealed.

Now I have to admit that I thought Morrissey's 'List of the Lost' was guaranteed to win, as it was so excruciating- and he did make the final cut, so he's in the running.

But now, having read the other shortlisted entries, I don't think he has much to be concerned about...

I do wonder (just for a few mad moments) if editors of literary fiction ever have a conversation with their writers about making a mediocre sex scene awful instead, just in the hope of getting a bad sex nomination.

Many will have heard the saying: There is no such thing as bad publicity.

We all know how difficult it can be to get a book noticed among the myriad of other books. So how better to boost sales than by getting onto this shortlist- and even winning.

(No, of course not,  I was just letting my imagination get the better of my common sense.) :D

So this year's contenders are:


  • Morrissey - List of the Lost

  • Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars.

  • Richard Bausch - Before, During, After.

  • Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers. 

  • Erica Jong - Fear of Dying. 

  • Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies.

  • George Pelecanos - The Martini Shot. 

  • Tomas Espedal - Against Nature.

If you have a strong enough constitution you can read the extracts in this Daily Telegraph (books section) article.

If I had to choose it would be either, Fates and Furies, or Book of Numbers.

The winner is announced early December.


















6 comments:

Patsy said...

Whenever I see these extracts I wonder what the rest of the writing is like. If it's all terrible how did it get published? And if it's just the sex scenes which are bad, why don't they just leave those out?

Rosemary Gemmell said...

Haven't heard of any of those, Carol, apart from maybe the Erica Jong one. Not sure if I'll bother reading the extracts - again apart from that one as I'm curious why she's mentioned!

Wendy's Writing said...

Thank you so much for sharing, Carlol... wonderful entertainment for a Sunday morning (still wiping away the tears!)

Carolb said...

Agree with you, Patsy. :-)

Carolb said...

I'd only heard of a couple of them, Rosemary, including Erica Jong- I didn't think hers was actually bad enough to qualify. :-)

Carolb said...

You're welcome, Wendy. :D