Morrissey’s first novel List of the Lost has been nominated for Literary Review‘s annual ‘Bad Sex’ award
“Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation,” begins the now famously cringeworthy sex scene in Morrissey’s debut novel List of the Lost. Not a huge surprise that the singer-turned-author has now been nominated for Literary Review‘s, ahem, prestigious Bad Sex In Fiction award.
Each year the magazine gives the award to the author who has provided the most irksome account of sex in a novel. Morrissey’s novel has been described as “a tawdry, forgotten 1950s pulp novel” by the NME while Karl Smith said, “the whole passage could just as easily be read as a description of two people playing on the stairs with a slinky.” When describing the sex scene in a review for The Quietus.
Let’s recount the awkward scene in full, “Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”
Bulbous salutation indeed.
The results will be announced on 1 December. Erica Jong, Richard Bausch, Tomas Espedal, Lauren Groff, Aleksandar Hemon, George Pelecanos and Joshua Cohen will provide the competition.
Update
Morrissey has now won the award. Is anyone even slightly surprised?
