Irish writer wins 'bad sex' award

Author Rowan Somerville has beaten former spin doctor Alastair Campbell and poet Craig Raine to win the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award..

The award, which was established by Auberon Waugh in 1993, celebrates crude, tasteless or ridiculous descriptions of sex in modern literature.

Somerville, who is from England but has family connections in Co Donegal and who lived there until recently, was handed the award for his second novel The Shape of Her at the appropriately named In & Out (Naval & Military) Club at St James's Square, London last night.

Judges of this year's award said they were particularly impressed with Somerville's line: “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.”

They also found merit in the passage: "He unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing the night. He took it between his lips and sucked the salt from her."

Somerville, who was handed his prize by film director Michael Winner, had mixed feelings about winning the award.

"It's a very Zen prize because to win is to lose," he told The Irish Times. "It's interesting that the judges found the line about the lepidopterist so amusing because the point of that whole piece was used to describe a young man who doesn't realise he's being sexually abused, trying to make love with someone.

“Out of context it sounds like a bad description of making love, but it obviously represents much more than that." he added.

Somerville's first novel The End of Sleep was shortlisted for the prestigious 2008 Glen Dimplex New Writers Award and the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' prize.

The author said he believed the awards themselves represent little more than old-fashioned British public school attitudes towards sex.

"I think the whole thing is a little pathetic to be honest. The awards are a sign of a peculiar Englishness that encompasses Benny Hill and Page 3 girls and lack of comfort around sex," he said.

"To an extent it's all very harmless but really it's kind of like a group of teenage bullies in a classroom pointing and sniggering at someone who said 'bum'." he added.

Other shortlisted books for this year's award included The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon, Maya by Alastair Campbell, Mr Peanut by Adam Ross, Heartbreak by Craig Raine and A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee.

Former Labour Party spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who began his career writing erotic prose for Forum magazine before progressing to the Daily Mirror, was reported to have ruined his chances of securing the prize for his novel Maya because of his enthusiasm for winning it.

Somerville said that while he had doubts about the award itself it was still an honour to be on a shortlist that included writers such as Franzen and Tsiolkas.

"In the end the award is something that is completely meaningless but what does mean something is that two of the books I liked best this year were on the list and both of them were magnificent," he said.

Previous winners of the Bad Sex award include Norman Mailer, Sebastian Faulks, Tom Wolfe, Melvyn Bragg and AA Gill.

Last year the award was won by Jonathan Littell for The Kindly Ones. John Banville was on the shortlist for the second time for his novel The Infinities.

Other Irish writers to be shortlisted for the award include Roddy Doyle for A Star Called Henry, Jamie O'Neill for At Swim, Two Boys and Brian O'Doherty for The Deposition of Father McGreevy.