Eight top examples of writing about sex

Hannah Tennant-Moore is the author of Wreck and Order.

At LitHub she tagged a "collection of credible, affecting sex scenes by writers who are celebrated not for their illicit content, but for their uncommonly precise prose and insightful observations of human nature," including:

In American Purgatorio by John Haskell—one of the great, underappreciated novels of the last decade—a man is lost, desperate, and grieving because his wife has disappeared. In an effort at healing, he tries to get himself to cross over what he calls “the sexual membrane” that “separates our everyday life from our sexual life.” He believes that feeling aroused will help him out of the prison of his own pain: “If I would have a little more desire then my thoughts—and by virtue of my thoughts, my life—would automatically focus on the world and enter the world and pull me away from my suffering.” So he hits on a woman at a party, and they go into a room together and start making out. They work hard to “cross the membrane,” but ultimately remain separate and unsatisfied because they’re each trying to...[read on]

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: John Haskell's American Purgatorio.

--Marshal Zeringue