I love these wild awards for the bizarre. Aniruddh Bahal’s just swept the bad-sex-in- fiction equivalent of the Oscars for this beaut about his hero (who feels like an “ancient Aryan warlord” after he finds a Swastika shaved into his female’s privates):
“She picks up a Bugatti’s momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen’s steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she’s eating up the road with all cylinders blazing.”
Gaaaaaah! That’s really bad. But some of the others are gems, too:
- (1996) David Huggins, The Big Kiss: An Arcade Mystery: “Liz squeaked like wet rubber”
- (1994) Philip Hook, The Stonebreakers: “Their jaws ground in feverish mutual mastication. Saliva and sweat. Sweat and saliva. There was a purposeful shedding of clothing.”
- (1997) Nicholas Royle, The Matter of the Heart: :She made a noise somewhere between a beached seal and a police siren.”
Wasn’t there one for the worst opening line, too? I remember reading one that said “He was thinking of her, and she was not his sister.” Dropped the book like a stone.
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