Rowan Somerville,left, the Irish author, has narrowly beaten the former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell to win this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
By Heidi Blake , The Telegraph 30 Nov 2010
Somerville was crowned overall winner of the prize, which celebrates crude or outlandish sexual passages in modern literature, for his second novel, The Shape of Her.
He also beat the American novelist Jonathan Franzen, who was nominated for Freedom, and the Austrialian author Christos Tsiolkas, whose novel The Slap was long-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize.
The judges said they were particularly taken with Somerville’s sentence: “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.”
Other amorous passages in The Shape of Her contained a female body part “upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing the night” and described how one character “twisted onto her belly like a fish flipping itself”.
The Irish author was presented with the 18th annual Bad Sex award by Michael Winner, the film director, at a lavish ceremony in London last night.
Full story at The Telegraph.
1 comment:
Bad sex award is done by uptight english people terrified of sex...googled reviews for the author's work below...why do you think Franzen in on there ? Duh
THE ECONOMIST - 17/7/10
"Deceptively simple in plot and singularly musical in its voice, it is a study of the place where our past has become our present. A summer read to be kept - and visited in the dark days of winter."
IRISH TIMES - 10.07.10
"darkly erotic, offbeat holiday read... an entertaining book that while not echoing to the chimes of chick lit, probably wouldn't be out of place in the beach bag."
THE GUARDIAN - 17/7/10
"Somerville is clearly a thoughtful writer... a rich plot and some lovely vivid local colour."
PRESS ASSOCATION
"Alternating between the past and the present, the novel explores the open scars of childhood abuse and its effect on later relationships."
THE DUBLINER
"confronts us with an extended meditation on the anxious incomprehensbility surrounding sex and desire."
FOR BOOKS SAKE blog
"Rowan Somerville is a talented author, perfectly capturing the characters¿ distinctive voices...The language is gorgeous, rich and evocative...the pacing is perfect. The Shape of Her is dark, beautiful and an ideal summer read."
FOLLOW THE THREAD blog
"Somerville has a deft turn of phrase"
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