Bridget Jones misses out on Bad Sex prize

 
7 November 2013

Poor old Bridget Jones. First, 40 pages of the Only Fools and Horses actor David Jason’s memoir turn up in Helen Fielding’s latest novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy owing to a printing error. Now the same novel has been overlooked for the most cultish literary award of the year — the annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

The judges agonised over the inclusion of Bridget Jones but ultimately felt her performance with an ex-Army officer — “‘Oh, oh,’ I gasped. ‘Did they teach you this in the SAS?’” didn’t quite pass muster.

In a nod to the Man Booker Prize, which has decided to extend its remit across the Atlantic, the Bad Sex Award shortlist stretches from India to the US. The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.

The most famous American author on the shortlist is folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose long lost 1947 novel House of Earth was published this year (“She felt her organs fondle, and she felt them squeeze, suck, gently, easily, softly, smoothly, wet, damp, slick ...”).

Other shortlisted novels include My Education by Susan Choi, The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood, Motherland by William Nicholson, The Victoria System by Eric Reinhardt, The World Was All Before Them by Matthew Reynolds, The City of Devi by Manil Suri and Secrecy by Rupert Thomson.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in