It has been ravaged by reviewers.
Singer Morrissey, 55, is known for a special brand of self-indulgent wankery and self-aggrandisement of which much fun has been made over the years.
Surely, though, even his fiercest critics weren’t prepared for the sheer wretchedness of his debut novel.
The horror at the awful ickiness of the Smiths former lead singer’s sex scenes was so universal that #Morrissey became a trending topic on Twitter.
Here’s a sample:
Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.
#BulbousSalutation.
The novel, called List of the Lost, is about a group of four young athletes being stalked by an evil being in 1970s Boston.
Disclaimer: I have not read this book, but having read the reviews of it, I am unlikely to — unless I’m feeling particularly self-flagellatory.
The Guardian advises readers not to “sully” themselves by reading this novel. It is, the reviewer opines, “an unpolished turd of a book”.
The Telegraph gave it one star.
The Daily Beast reports that it is a “bizarre, misogynistic ramble”.
The singer himself has described it thus:
“The theme is demonology … the left-handed path of black magic. It is about a sports relay team in 1970s America who accidentally kill a wretch who, in esoteric language, might be known as a Fetch … a discarnate entity in physical form. He appears, though, as an omen of the immediate deaths of each member of the relay team. He is a life force of a devil incarnate, yet in his astral shell he is one phase removed from life. The wretch begins a banishing ritual of the four main characters, and therefore his own death at the beginning of the book is illusory.”
Ooooh, I get it now.
I must admit, there is a small part of me that wants to experience List of the Lost firsthand, but it’s probably best not to encourage Morrissey to pen any more sex scenes.
This is a man whose ego has reached such outlandish proportions that he demanded his autobiography, Autobiography, be published as an instant Penguin Classic.
It’s unclear if Morrissey intends to bestow any more of his novels on an ungrateful public, but one thing’s for sure: the publication of List of the Lost has taken all the suspense out of the 2015 Bad Sex Awards.
Top Comments
Give the guy a break! At least he has attempted to write and publish a novel.
I've heard about this book, and heaven knows I'm miserable now ....