Bad Sex, Good Sex…
Nancy Huston has won the 2012 Bad Sex in Fiction Award for Infrared, published by Atlantic Books.
Infrared tells the story of Rena who is a photographer with a taste for taking infrared snaps of her lovers during sex.
The competition organisers says that the novel stood out for sentences such as:
‘Kamal and I are totally immersed in flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements.’
And
‘…the quivering sensation, the carnal pink palpitation that detaches you from all colour and all flesh, making you see only stars, constellations, milky ways, propelling you bodiless and soulless into undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate…
This is Nancy Huston’s 14th novel and in the past she has won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, the Prix Femina and been shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Originally from Canada and now living in Paris, she first writes in French and then translates her books into English.
She is only the third woman to win the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Other contenders for this year’s award were: Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood, Ben Masters’s Noughties and Nicola Barker’s The Yips
It is so hard to write about sex.
The best sex scene I have ever read is in The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. It is intense and compelling and, from memory, the most sensuous moment is when the hero holds up his lover’s hair to the light while she is sleeping …which makes it sound lame, but by that point the reader is gripped by the white hot frisson of their doomed romance.
Haven’t read it yet, but I have also heard very good things about Brighton author Susanna Quinn’s ebook The Ivy Lessons – written in the style of Fifty Shades, this story is about a forbidden romance between an arrogant Actor-Teacher and a young drama student. It’s getting tons of good reviews on Amazon…
Any other suggestions??
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BACK TO CREATIVE WRITING SCHOOL — 120+ reviews on Amazon and over 75% gave it five stars
A Good Confession
"Unputdownable" Miriam Stoppard
BRIDGET WHELAN writer 
A Chance to Sit Down by Meredith Daneman has some of my favourite sex scenes. A google revealed it was written in 1971 and was a BBC TV series in the early 80s, However I bought this book in the mid 80s when I was going through a dance craze – doing it and watching it – and I’d buy anything set in a ballet or dance company. I hadn’t seen the TV series and had no idea it existed – nor that this book was so old when I bought it.
They say sex and dancing are strongly related – my favourite dance teacher once told me feel was much more important than good technique which will only take you so far. Great dancers are, he said, usually having great sex too or are really into their sex.
Anyway, if you want good sex scenes and you love the world of dance, this book really does it. From a woman’s point of view, perhaps, or a gay man’s maybe. The sex felt very real and incredibly sensuous and desirable. And the difference between great sex in a bad relationship and great sex in a good relationship was also very well done.
This book has everything for me. If I were invited onto Radio 4’s A Good Read, this is the one I’d pick. It’s out of print but deserves to be reissued in my opinion!