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An empty beach
‘Christ!’ he muttered, placing himself on top of her. ‘It’s bloody cold’ ... an empty beach. Photograph: Cultura RM/Alamy
‘Christ!’ he muttered, placing himself on top of her. ‘It’s bloody cold’ ... an empty beach. Photograph: Cultura RM/Alamy

Bad sex award 2017 shortlist: the contenders in quotes

This article is more than 6 years old

Literary theory, avalanches and a frosty encounter on a beach – it’s time to get up close and personal with the challengers for the Literary Review’s 2017 Bad sex in fiction prize

The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet

He puts his hands on Bianca’s shoulders and slips off her low-cut top. Suddenly inspired, he whispers into her ear, as if to himself: ‘I desire the landscape that is enveloped in this woman, a landscape I do not know but that I can feel, and until I have unfolded that landscape, I will not be happy …’

Bianca shivers with pleasure. Simon whispers to her with an authority that he has never felt before: ‘Let’s construct an assemblage.’

The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen

On the stone porch, in the hot, mountain air, we grapple with our clothing, which, in the darkness, becomes as complicated as mountaineering gear. Her black shirt around her neck, mine unbuttoned, our shorts and underwear slid to our ankles, we seem to be moving at avalanche speed and also, unfortunately, with avalanche precision.

Mother of Darkness by Venetia Welby

Light filters in from the ravaging streaks of the dawn. It splits into fragments of every hue the world has hidden as it strikes the prism of their shelter. Tera’s eyes expand and reflect, crystal orbs of time and space. She moans in colours as he pushes the white dress away and beyond the angelic flesh, luminescent against the damp, mossy bed.

As a God Might Be by Neil Griffiths

Looking down, she unbuckled his belt. ‘We’re grown-ups.’

Perhaps he wasn’t quite in the moment, because he thought of Kierkegaard and Socrates. If there wasn’t great wisdom gained by lust, by love, its consummation – the aesthetics of all this – then you were doing it wrong.

‘Kiss me again.’

The Future Won’t Be Long by Jarett Kobek

Memories of these previous encounters became distant, remote, erased once I got down to brass tacks with Jon de Lee.

With Jon it was communication, a dialogue between two bodies, electric impulses transmitted over wires of flesh and bone. Words one cannot speak, words that can only be heard. Skin that became skin that became skin anew.

We made love and we had sex and we had sex and we made love. But reader, again, I implore. Mistake me not. I am not your Pollyanna, I am not your sweet princess. We fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked.

War Cry by Wilbur Smith (with David Churchill)

‘I’m going to have you now,’ Leon said. He led her back up the beach to where the sand was dry. Then he took off his coat, placed it on the ground and she lay down upon it.

‘Christ!’ he muttered, placing himself on top of her. ‘It’s bloody cold. I might get frostbite on my cock.’

She gave a low purring laugh. ‘Silly man. Why don’t you put it somewhere hot?’

Here Comes Trouble by Simon Wroe

A clothed body is always human or human-like, a naked body always animal or animal-like. Only at close quarters is the full extent of a body’s wildness revealed, like when a bird gets trapped inside a house. One is moved to not entirely human thinking then. One goes towards its animalness.

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