McEwan’s bid for Bad Sex glory

A UNIQUE crack at the prize at this year’s Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction from Ian McEwan. Previous star nominees have included carnally challenged efforts from Tony Blair and Morrissey, but McEwan has taken a unique approach. In his new novel, Nutshell, all the sex scenes are observed by a foetus from within the womb. Certainly gains kudos for originality.

The book is inspired by Hamlet, with the baby’s mother, Trudy, plotting with her lover Claude to kill her husband, Claude’s brother John. After their plan gains traction murder proves to be an aphrodisiac.

“Claude crouches by my mother and might already be naked,” the baby explains, listening in. “I hear his breath on her neck. He’s undressing her, to date a peak of sensual generosity unscaled by him. ‘Careful,’ Trudy says. ‘Those buttons are pearls.’ He grunts in reply. His fingers are inexpert, working solely for his own needs. Something of his or hers lands on the bedroom floor. A shoe, or trousers with heavy belt. She’s writhing strangely. Impatience. He issues a command in the form of a second grunt. I’m cowering.” The foetus displays a remarkable, and amphibious, grasp of vocabulary. “Like a mating toad, he clasps himself against her back. On her, now in her, and deep,” McEwan writes. “A glutinous drowning, like something pedantic crawling through a swamp.” Whatever happened to lobster and champagne?