Good Sex in Fiction

It’s easy to sneer at the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award – sneering at the sneerers, as it were – but it’s no lie that writing well about sex is difficult, and perhaps more difficult in prose than in poetry. I think there are three main reasons for this.

Firstly, the vocabulary: the words for human genitalia, when they aren’t puerile or bluntly medical, are semantically loaded with enough sexual-political freight to capsize any sentence. Secondly, the activity itself: however pleasant it may feel to those involved, most variations of the sexual act are pretty obviously open to ridicule. The third reason relates to those feelings. The brain may be “the largest sexual organ”, but orgasm switches important parts of it off. We barely know ourselves when having sex; how should we be expected to write it?

Nevertheless, good sex writing does exist – and here, sticking to the parameters of the award, I essentially mean the sex scene in the literary novel or short story, ignoring outright pornography or its kissing cousin, erotica. Which is not to say the scene should not be arousing, but its primary object should be to serve the story. The writing should teach us about the characters. Ideally, it should teach us about sex, too.

One recent novel that would surely be nominated for a Good Sex in Fiction Award, if such a thing existed, is Eimear McBride’s The Lesser Bohemians (2016). McBride’s book, about an Irish drama student who has a relationship with an older British actor, refuses to recognize a barrier between what might be termed “sex acts” and any other part of the characters’ interaction – and further buries the physical descriptions in McBride’s distinctive prose style: Bit harder? he wonders. I. I. But the mouth on my breasts then – tickle and strange delight of being seen –surprises me, if not to everything, to something. Like first foot inveigle toward what this could be. With the look in his eye. With his body in me. Going and going and harder until Oh fuck, he says Hold still, I’m way too close, any chance you are?