As Auberon Waugh said, the enormous number of entries for the 1998 Literary Review Bad Sex Prize - awarded to "the year's literary novel with the worst, most redundant or embarrassing description of the sexual act"- "might suggest that there is more Bad Sex than ever before in the British novel, but everything else indicates otherwise ... Perhaps we can claim to have elevated the moral tone of the nation, and might ourselves be awarded some Family Values prize by a grateful government."
He also suggested that some novelists might be "writing specially objectionable scenes with a view to winning the Prize (a handsome modern sculpture, by Amelia Gatacre, vaguely suggestive of sex)."
The Winner
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson)
Between her legs she felt the touch of his hand while he whispered in her ear. "Madame Guilbert, you are a remarkable woman. If you were not married I might think myself in love with you."
"Please, Octave. Please."
Charlotte heard her own voice as she begged him to begin, but he kept her waiting, whispering, "Dominique, you're so beautiful"' while his hand caressed her until she could take no more but reached out and pulled him into her.
She felt Julien clench his body in desperate self-control. He moved slowly back and forth for a few minutes, then briefly stopped.
"Dominique," he breathed, "this is so wonderful I feel I might disintegrate, I might break into a million fragments."
She pushed against him, reclaimed him, and he began to move more vigorously, then sigh with sad rapture as though he recognised his time was limited.
At the last moment she did feel a rise of feeling in herself as he groaned out her presumed name for the final time; but what name she called out in return she could not have said, as her mind was full of the picture of Julien being annihilated, as he slumped down gasping on top of her, breaking into tiny dying fragments.
Meanwhile, her ears were filled with the sound of a soft but frantic gasping, and it was some time before she identified it as her own.
The Shortlist
England, England by Julian Barnes (Jonathan Cape):
She left the nursery. Sir Jack began to grizzle to himself, first quietly, then louder. Finally, he boomed out, ‘NAPPY!’, and Lucy, waiting behind the door with her hands in a bowl of iced water, came running.... Then, with a bigger, riper growl, he whispered, ‘Poo’.
‘Baby do poo?’ she asked encouragingly, as if not entirely convinced that he was capable of the ultimate act of Babyhood. There were some Babies who wanted to be told they couldn't, and so didn't...
His hips pushed upwards, she squeezed her glistening hands in response, and Sir Jack Pitman, entrepreneur, innovator, ideas man, arts patron and inner-city revitalizer, Sir Jack Pitman, less a captain of industry than a very admiral, Sir Jack Pitman, visionary, dreamer, man of action and patriot, began a throaty crescendo which ended in a sforzando bellow of ‘POOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ He let out a string of ploppy farts, came joltingly in Lucy's joined hands, and shat spectacularly in his nappy.
By Design by Richard E Grant (Picador)
She sucks my tongue so hard it is difficult to form a syllable, besides which my bloodrush south is so ferocious that I really have little choice other than to succumb completely, vaguely conscious that should she guide my now throbbing Titanic into her icebergs, I would definitely be sunk...
Kyla's personalized tour around my nether world in eighty glorious ways is not quite the agenda I had in mind for today. Not that I'm complaining. Kyla's furious up-down dedication is fast approaching meltdown, and a synaptic leap synchs two thoughts: 1) why? and 2) why not let's get truly biblical and share and share alike?
By the Light of My Father's Smile by Alice Walker (The Women's Press)
Pauline flicks her clitoris with a tongue that seems made of suede, and Susannah begins to moan anew. It is a moan so animallike and guttural, so abandoned and shameless, so full of self-witness, a moan so unlike her day-to-day self, when a certain fastidious haughtiness is often commented on in her character, that it is comical. Leaving passion for just a moment, they both laugh.... Shit, says Susannah. Pauline raises her head: Next time, she mutters, I’ll have you on the floor.
Pauline's mouth catches the whole of Susannah's vulva.... Unbidden, in that moment, she thinks of me and of her mother, so often fighting, when she was a child. Only to emerge from our bedroom after a fight completely peaceful, tranquil, with each other. Our every movement one of indolence, our every utterance marked by an unfathomable calm.
The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes (Bloomsbury)
... They join in a liberating, complete kiss that washes away all his insecurities, all his solitude, all his pain and shame. The two boys urgently, tremulously, ardently kiss in order to conquer death, if not for all time, at least for this moment.
...
No, not for the first time he masturbated, something he did rationally, as an act of will, but the first flowering of his sex, shocking, unthinkable before it actually happened...The first semen spilled by the young man, eternally, at that moment, the first man, Adam, a man adrift in semen.
Sad Bastard by Hugo Hamilton (Secker & Warburg):
She was leaning against the wall in Hogan's living room, allowing him to lift her dress and remove her rebel green underwear...
Man and superman! With his melted black shorts around his ankles and his buttocks flexing like the rump of a great stone goat god of mythology. One hand was propped against the wall for support. In the other, he held the luminous green knickers up to his nose and inhaled deeply.
Spending by Mary Gordon (Bloomsbury):
I took off my skirt and blouse, and then my bra. I kept my green underpants on ... He put his head between my legs, nuzzling at first. His beard was a little rough on the inside of my thighs. Then with his lips, then his tongue, he struck fire...
He swelled inside my mouth, a fruit that has to burst its skin. Comfort me with apples for I am sick of love. And it is a comfort, isn't it, the root, growing so solidly from its mossy bank, the bounty of abandonment, the cry that means full stop.
We were riding each other now, perhaps not kindly, like twin animals. Do twin animals ride each other, and if so, how?
Mr MacGregor by Alan Titchmarsh (Simon & Schuster)
Beads of sweat began to appear on Guy's forehead as he became more entangled in the lissom limbs of this human boa constrictor. For fully fifteen minutes their mutual passion heightened, with groans, sighs and liquid noises.
Then Serena stopped. She pulled away from Guy and leaned up on her elbows, a troubled look in her eyes. 'What's the matter?' she asked.
Guy was lying perfectly still on his back. 'I don't know.' He tried to speak calmly.
The Shape of Ice by Douglas Hurd (Little,Brown)
It was Artemis who took off the blazing dress. They lay quietly side by side for some minutes, neither thinking of the other. It was he who began to kiss her breasts, and it was he who put a hand between her thighs. It was she who encouraged him to move on top of her....
Christmas in Africa by Ivo Mosley (Travelman)
Stella lifted her right arm into the air. Her right breast rose with it, jutting against the dress and reviving Frank's libido.... This last method would induce an orgasm half-pleasure, half-pain, because it reminded him most of all that he would never be able to actually penetrate the wonderful temple of her body. Having come several times, Frank lay in a temporarily sated calmness, tinged with depression.
Others under serious consideration:
The Industry of Souls by Martin Booth (Dewi Lewis), a Booker nominee, and
The Travelling Horn Player by Barbara Trapido (Hamish Hamilton), a front runner for the Whitbread.
As Auberon Waugh said, "Finally, an American wag has sent in a copy of The Starr Report: The Independent Counsel's Complete Report to Congress on the Investigation of President Clinton , suggesting that it should be awarded the Bad Sex Prize for 1998. I am not sure it qualifies, until such time as the whole episode is officially relegated to the fiction shelf. It certainly contains plenty of bad sex, with the President always denying himself the pleasure of fellatio until the last encounter. But there must be room, at a celebration sponsored by Hamlet cigars, for the famous encounter on 31 March 1996, where Lewinsky explains: ‘"he focused on me pretty exclusively"... At one point, the President inserted a cigar in Ms Lewinsky's vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: "It tastes good."’"
Previous Winners
1993 Melvyn Bragg: A Time to Dance
1994 Philip Hook: The Stonebreakers
1995 Philip Kerr: Gridiron
1996 David Huggins: The Big Kiss
1997 Nicholas Royle: The Matter of the Heart
