{"id":233313,"date":"2025-07-03T00:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233313\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T00:16:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:16:10","slug":"lets-read-about-sex-what-are-the-books-that-do-it-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233313\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s read about sex: what are the books that do it best?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writers nominate novels that include what they consider to be well-written sex scenes.<\/p>\n

Writing sex is difficult: there\u2019s quite the spectrum of effects that a writer might be trying to achieve \u2013 from sex for sex\u2019s sake (spicy romance novels) to attempting to convey the most intimate of character developments from the awkward to the transgressive. Literary sex, in particular, is so notoriously difficult to get right that there is a long-running Bad Sex in Fiction award that has exposed some real clangers<\/a> (interesting to note that the majority of the offending authors are men) that rubbed the award\u2019s judges the wrong way.<\/p>\n

When I asked a bunch of New Zealand writers to send me their nominations for books with the best-written sex I got a range of responses. You\u2019ll see from the recommendations below that well-written sex includes not only sex that reads as authentically hot, but also sex that can read as authentically awkward, difficult and even disturbing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Herewith, a selection of great books with great (at least in the well-written sense) sex:<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley<\/b><\/p>\n

The Ministry of Time offers themes of identity, ethical dilemma, polar exploration, climate change and time travel \u2013 what more could you want? Great sex scenes, that\u2019s what. These are truly the cherry on top of what is already a gripping and bizarre-in-a-good-way story. The Ministry of Time\u2019s sex scenes are lightly written but the preceding tensions feel part of the act. These scenes are tender yet steamy and also incredibly banal. They\u2019re funny but hot, a perfect combo. At Auckland Writers Festival, author Kaliane Bradley said: \u201cYou\u2019re either a spite writer, or a horny writer.\u201d She is most definitely a horny writer. And a great one at that. \/ Liv Sisson, author of Fungi of Aotearoa<\/p>\n

A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

A Quiet Kind of Thunder is a YA that perfectly nails the experience of first-time (straight) sex. Two teens in love spend a weekend rendezvous in Glasgow getting frisky \u2013 and it\u2019s clumsy, it\u2019s fumbling, there\u2019s sweat and elbows accidentally pulling hair and awkward laughter and it\u2019s not romantic but it\u2019s safe and it\u2019s gentle and it\u2019s kind and it\u2019s real. Reading it as a young and inexperienced teen, it showed me that my first time wasn\u2019t going to be perfect \u2013 and that\u2019s OK. I think the narrator Steffi sums it up best, once it\u2019s all over: \u201cHe\u2019s sweaty and hot. I love him, and I\u2019m glad we\u2019ve shared this intense, sensual thing, but ew. Can I push him off?\u201d \/ Hannah Marshall, author of It\u2019s a Bit More Complicated Than That\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden<\/b><\/p>\n

Everything about this Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction-winning book is beautiful, but Chapter 10 shifts the novel from beautiful to steaming hot. Van der Wouden\u2019s debut is a triumph in the genre of historical fiction but also in the genre of sex writing. In this story about a highly anxious spinster oddly attached to a house in 1960s Den Haag, desire and sex comes as a surprise to everyone involved. What the sex scenes offer is a spring of hope and resolution to an otherwise desperately sad and traumatic situation: it offers the characters a pathway that involves love and energy and connection. It\u2019s also an edifying celebration of queer love in the context of a period of history that attempted to suppress it. \/ Claire Mabey, author of The Raven\u2019s Eye Runaways<\/p>\n

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor<\/b><\/p>\n

This novel does astonishing things with language. Its depiction of desire and pursuit and sex and longing is surprising and horny and so attuned to the weirdness and potency of those feelings. It never falls into the trap of trying to make desire either all beautiful or all raunchy. Generally speaking I think most of the best sex scenes I\u2019ve read are in queer books \u2013 thinking also of Mrs S by K Patrick, anything by Carmen Maria Machado, Eileen Myles\u2019 Chelsea Girls \u2013 maybe because they\u2019re all attuned to something other than the hetero power dynamic \/ the default porn norm? \/ Maddie Ballard, author of Bound: a memoir of making and remaking<\/p>\n

\"\"Three nominations for books containing well-written sex.
\nAll Fours by Miranda July<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThe sex scenes in this are like nothing else I can think of \u2013 so unashamed of their horniness, so female, so oblivious to taboo. The tampon scene blew my mind.\u201d \/ Maddie Ballard<\/p>\n

\u201cI love July\u2019s experimentation. It\u2019s such a horny book and fuelled by a fear of \u2018falling off the cliff\u2019 \u2013 a last gasp before the menopause effects a steep drop in oestrogen and strangles the libido. Such a hilarious, tender book. I don\u2019t really get why women are using it as a catalyst for blowing up their lives<\/a> (it\u2019s fiction!) but I do get why so many readers are clinging onto this expression of desire for dear life.\u201d \/ Claire Mabey<\/p>\n

Down from Upland by Murdoch Stephens<\/b><\/p>\n

Murdoch\u2019s books are about social relations and also, in particular, power relations, and he treats sex with the same lens. I reckon Lawrence & Gibson<\/a> (Stephens\u2019 publisher) in general treats sex in a specific way that is uncommon in NZ literature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Murdoch\u2019s influences are the French and American New Narrative writers who are both frank when it comes to sex, and eschew the abstract or the metaphor. It means the sex scenes can often be excruciating or awkward, but it all comes down to power. \/ Brannavan Gnanalingam, author of The life and opinions of Kartik Popat<\/p>\n

Into the River by Ted Dawe<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll nominate Ted Dawe\u2019s excellent, award-winning, banned YA novel Into the River. There\u2019s a wonderfully subversive and truthful sex scene in it which I have no intention of describing, because a summary will make it sound crass, whereas Ted\u2019s rendering is mischievous, startling and liberating. Family First, those self-appointed guardians of Aotearoa\/New Zealand\u2019s morality, demanded the book be either banned or restricted. And it was in our country for a while. In the meantime, attendant publicity and the book\u2019s merit saw it published in multiple overseas countries. Finally, the book was permitted in our own land \u2013 and you\u2019ll all have noticed the dreadful decline in national decency since that happened?? \/ David Hill, author of Below<\/p>\n

Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu<\/b><\/p>\n

The scene where Erin loses her virginity in Poorhara<\/a> by Michelle Rahurahu has stuck with me, not because it is sexy, but because it\u2019s disturbing, at moments comic but in a heartbreakingly sad way, and because it\u2019s multi-layered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in close third person so it\u2019s intensely psychological. Like Ocean Vuong does in On Earth We\u2019re Briefly Gorgeous, Rahurahu describes the physical acts in a gritty, real way but absolutely through Erin\u2019s sensibility \u2013 \u201cHe kept tracing [the pounamu pendant] over her body, kissing the places it went \u2026. Each patch of saliva he left on her dissolved the cells so that her body was slowly breaking down, softening into fleshy, brown strands of wet seaweed.\u201d<\/p>\n

On another level, we\u2019re seeing the sexual interaction as a continuation of communication or in this case miscommunication between the characters. \u201cHe shoved his tongue down her throat again. The kissing was nice, but she was worried about where it was going. \u2013 I\u2019m a virgin, she said hoarsely. He laughed \u2013 Oh that\u2019s fine. You don\u2019t have to be self-conscious.\u201d Sally Rooney is such a master of this, too, capturing in exquisite detail both the awkward and transcendent moments in the sexual relationships of her characters. \/ Claire Baylis, author of Dice<\/p>\n

CRASH by JG Ballard<\/b><\/p>\n

Far be it from me to likely be the only male in this selection of writers on good writing about sex and to wind up pointing to a writer whose publisher said, \u201cThe author of this book is beyond psychiatric help\u201d \u2013 but here it is.<\/p>\n

JG Ballard\u2019s CRASH was published in 1974 and remains as vivid and transgressive today. But possibly way more comprehensible, more funny, more sad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CRASH uses preternaturally lucid, sane, and formal English prose to explore the possibility of the intersection of sex and the car crash to heal the trauma of a sanctuary \u2013 the dull car \u2013 becoming a sudden violent nest of knives. It\u2019s an incredible act of avant garde-ism that effectively uses a classic signifier of class \u2013 fine, stylised, controlled English \u2013 to investigate the utterly outr\u00e9 \u2013 uber-explicit sexuality teamed with violent physical trauma, the long after-effects and how they might be healed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheCarl Shuker\u2019s copy of CRASH by JG Ballard.<\/p>\n

Ballard leans in all the way and articulates the concept with what Amis \u2013 perfectly \u2013 called \u201cglazed and creamy precision\u201d. The perfectly structured result is mostly sex but utterly unsexy and utterly compulsive. The vocabulary completely non-metaphorical (globes of semen and instrument binnacles), it becomes a kind of abstract instruction manual for a post-Christian, post-humanist sexual healing \u2013 access to the sacred \u2013 however you can get it and wherever you can find it.<\/p>\n

It is the pinnacle of Ballard\u2019s work after the outrageous death of his young wife meant all other forms of writing were rendered inadequate, sentimental and bankrupt. It\u2019s almost impossible to articulate its power and effect; even the closed book hums on the shelf. I re-read it in Japan, aged 24, in mourning combined with a different form of culture shock on top and can confirm \u2013 in a state of outraged disturb \u2013 only the outrageously disturbing is comfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1992 Suede sang, \u201cWhat does it take to turn you on? Now he has gone?\u201d CRASH is a kind of an answer where \u201che\u201d could be whatever unbearable thing you\u2019ve lost or that\u2019s happened to you, and the answer to that question could be: whatever it takes. \/ Carl Shuker, author of The Royal Free<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writers nominate novels that include what they consider to be well-written sex scenes. Writing sex is difficult: there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,10724,77,91484,1002,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-233313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-creative-writing","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-queer-sex","12":"tag-sex","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114786427943507484","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}