The Award Authors Don't Want

post from BookFox on 21 November 2008 02:14:00 AM. © BookFox

It's that time of year again: the shortlist of the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award has been announced. It's just in time for the Holiday season, in case you're interested in reading (or getting an annoying co-worker to read) badly written sex scenes. Or, at the very least, it will provide amusing online entertainment. None other than John Updike and Paulo Coelho are on this years list--not very surprising inclusions given their recent evaluation in the critical literary community.

The Guardian article includes this bit from first-time novelist Ann Allestree:

"It's very heartening to see what a distinguished list of writers seem to be listed with me," said Allestree. "I wrote the book because I had written memoirs and biographies, and thought every writer has to do a novel, it's a force majeure. So I set off to do it, and thought I've got to put sex in ? every novel's got to have sex in it."