Why my new book doesn't have any sex in it

Also, the world's silliest superyachts, a new crime drama which DOES have sex scenes, and a pathetic lament about sunglasses

Do we want sex or do we not want sex? I’m confused. According to a recent and immensely scientific study by The Economist, sex scenes in films have dropped 40 per cent since 2000, and half of last year’s biggest box office films didn’t have any sex in them at all. I seem to constantly read newspaper articles claiming that nobody’s having sex anymore. On the other hand, Gen Z must be a bit into sex because they can’t get enough of Bridgerton and sexy fairies.

By sexy fairies, I mean the literary genre known as romantasy, or books about sexy fairies/dragons/witches set in faraway lands (romance set in a fantasy world = romantasy). It’s big business, the latest publishing trend. Last year, the romantasy queen, an American writer called Sarah Maas, encouraged literally billions of TikToks as teens and twenty-somethings fell for her books. Various others are also crowding the bestseller lists with evil but libidinous princes and frisky demons. A friend told me about this literary sensation a few months ago, instructing me to google ‘fairy porn’, which threw up some quite weird results. But sexy fairies and their ilk are a thing, they’ve become a hot new phenomenon.

Meanwhile, with impeccable timing, my new book is about to come out and it doesn’t have ANY sex in it at all. Not one steamy scene. Such moments are alluded to but not actually in there. Couldn’t face writing them; didn’t include any. Sex is out, I decided while writing it. Sorry. (No horny dragons either.)

When I started writing rom coms a few years ago, I included plenty of sex, but it was comedy sex. Sex, of course, is a very wonderful thing but also fairly comedic and I wanted to get that across in my books. Why are you putting your hand there? What are you doing now? WHAT is that noise? (In my third novel, The Wish List, there’s a Tory who shouts ‘COWABUNGA!’ every time he reaches a critical moment and while I can’t possibly tell you who inspired that, I was enormously moved by all the readers who wrote ‘COWABUNGA!’ underneath my subsequent Instagram posts about the book.)

I’ve written sex scenes set in cars, sex in showers, sex in Norfolk gardens, sex in sexy hotels, phone sex and so on. A lot of sex, rarely deeply serious. When Dame Jilly Cooper gave me a quote for my first novel (‘the sex makes me feel like a nun’), I felt like I’d been anointed by the Pope. The Pope of Sex.

But that was back in 2018, and when I started writing my forthcoming novel, I decided against sex scenes for various reasons. Partly because I couldn’t face spending another week in a soundproofed booth reading the audio version aloud while a 20-something sound technician in the adjacent booth listened along and told me to go back a few sentences if I fluffed a word.

‘Can we just go back to the bit where you sai—’

‘YES, don’t worry, I know exactly which line you mean.’

(My fourth book even begins with a sex scene between a long-term couple doing it one Friday morning, pushing and shoving while also having a conversation about the leaking shower tray and when the plumber’s coming to fix it. That was a memorably embarrassing scene to kick off with in the sound booth.)

But I also decided against sex scenes because laughing or even making jokes about sex feels more dangerous now. One can so easily be criticised or cancelled for a perceived lack of sensitivity that I chose to do without it at all, decided that readers could simply imagine what went on after a bedroom door closed. You might, for example, have a male character do something to a female character that people disprove of. Let’s not use anything too disgusting as an example. Let’s say he’s smearing jelly over her. So he’s smearing jelly over her, but someone reads this, takes offence and grumbles about it online. Suddenly, the Society Against Jelly Smearers weighs in and says it’s irresponsible to be promoting jelly smearing in a book even though it’s a FICTIONAL CHARACTER smearing jelly over another FICTIONAL CHARACTER, and the next thing I know I’m cancelled for a scene involving jelly smearing.

You see what I mean? I just became increasingly nervous that I might fall foul of the morality police, so I wimped out of writing such scenes at all because I didn’t want to write something straight and uptight just to keep people happy. It’s not a very natural way to write. Maybe certain screenwriters and directors have decided the same, thus less sex on the big screen.

Certain contemporary writers do sex brilliantly. Sally Rooney is often singled out and praised, and the TV adaptation of Normal People, her second novel, was celebrated for its thoughtful depiction of sex between the two young protagonists. So much so that a friend tells me her daughter’s school used scenes from the TV series to teach them about sex. Rooney’s next book, Intermezzo, is out in September FYI, and it’s about two brothers who live in Dublin - one a lawyer; one a competitive chess player. I imagine there will be sex in that, although hopefully not between the brothers.

My forthcoming one, The Right Place, is a sex-free zone if you feel like that when it comes out in August. My family will be pleased because they largely skipped over the racy parts, although one brother used to pick up each new novel and choose various passages to read aloud over boozy lunches while everyone else hooted with laughter. You didn’t see that in Saltburn, did you?

The kids who are into romantasy may not like it, on the other hand. But to make up for the lack of action, there are croissants and jambon baguettes and beef bourguignon and lavender ice-cream and camembert and French onion soup and baked pears because my heroine is a chef and almost the entire novel is set in a chateau in Provence. No jelly though. Don’t panic.

(PS. My most recent book, Looking Out For Love, is 99p on Kindle for the rest of the month, if you’re going away and need something for the sunbed about life/love/a retired police dog called Basil. This one does have a few sex scenes. Get it HERE.)

Picture of the week

I was in Sardinia last week, on holiday with Mum, my bro, and some very wonderful family friends. It was magical: sun, sea, pasta, wine, too many cherries for breakfast, Scrabble, and a local market where I bought 2kg of pecorino to schlep home in my suitcase like some sort of deranged cheese smuggler. Also, boat spotting. I wrote in my Telegraph column last Saturday about the time I was on the Amalfi coast, in a lovely local little coastal restaurant which seemed hidden and off-the-beaten track and away from all the hideously over-crowded, more fashionable restaurants around there, when suddenly a massive superyacht appeared in the bay and Elton John, David Furnish, Michael Caine and his wife Shakira came ashore and had lunch on the table next to us (not so hidden after all, it turned out). I’ve been peculiarly obsessed with those stupidly large boats ever since.

Does anyone really need to potter about the Med in a boat bigger than the Ark? Do such yachts really need to have spas and bowling alleys? Are they not silly enough already? My pal Henry, who flogs superyachts, was offering a 98m whopper last summer that came with a helipad which doubled as a basketball court, plus another helipad for when your friends inconveniently all arrive in their choppers at the same time. It also had outdoors fireplaces for all those moments floating about Capri when you think ‘Do you know what I could do with? Being even hotter.’

In Sicily a couple of years ago I spied a superyacht owned by an American billionaire which boasted the singular honour of being the only superyacht in the world with an IMAX cinema. A friend told me around the same time that she’d recently spotted a big one (as it were) in Greece called ‘Thank You Daddy.’ You shouldn’t be allowed a boat if that’s what you’re going to call it.

I wandered down to the marina in Sardinia early one morning last week and spied one called My Toy (barf) and another called Sibelle which, on googling, I discovered was owned by a chap called Alexander Zhukov, ex-husband of the lady who’s just married Rupert Murdoch, and father of Dasha Zhukova, who was married to Roman Ambramovich for a spell and is now married to a Niarchos. I would have taken a photo because it was SO VAST, but there were several security guards loitering and they were already looking quite suspiciously at me. It’s for sale for £23m if you still haven’t sorted out your summer holiday and everywhere else is booked. The particulars are HERE.

Recommendation of the week

I was raised on a TV diet of Morse/Frost/Taggart/Poirot etc so I quite love a murdery crime drama. Presumed Innocent is the new one on Apple, staring Jake Gyllenhaal as a lawyer whose colleague is found brutally murdered and trussed up like a supermarket chicken in the first episode (this isn’t a spoiler, it happens right at the start). I downloaded the first two on my phone and impatiently tapped at it to get hold of the third, only to discover that Apple is doing that boring thing of rationing them out week by week like it’s the Medieval Times. Quite tiresome that platforms have started doing this. You guys got us hooked on downloading and binging whole series in one go. Why are you now being coy and drip feeding us episodes one at a time?

Anyway, it’s good, gripping and has a GREAT cast inc Peter Sarsgaard (Jake Gyllenhaal’s real-life brother-in-law, as it happens), who’s a very smarmy lawyer and may or may not turn out to be a baddie. Can’t tell you now because I’ve only been allowed to watch the first two episodes. Careful if you’re watching it in public though because it’s bucking the trend discussed above and does include quite a few sex scenes. I watched it on the flight back to London on Saturday morning, in an aisle seat, and every time someone walked past on the way back from the loo, I panicked that they were returning to their seat to say; ‘Marjorie, I’ve just seen a woman in 20D watching pornography on her phone. We’re never flying EasyJet again.’

Nonsense of the week

Sunglasses and my extraordinary ability to make them disappear. I lost not one but TWO PAIRS in ONE DAY on the weekend. Possibly because I was so distracted by watching the above, I managed to leave one pair in the seat pocket of the flight (a classic vacuum for personal belongings, the seat pocket in front of you). A couple of hours later, I opened my suitcase to discover that the spare pair I’d packed had snapped during the journey.

They were cheap. I never let myself buy posh, expensive sunglasses on the basis that I seem to fritter sunglasses away much in the same manner as the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, who insisted on wearing a brand new pair of socks every day. When I worked at Tatler, we had an annual summer issue that came with a free pair of sunglasses and I used to stock up on those, loading my desk drawer with multiple pairs. I suspect they were made in China and capable of burning holes in my retinas but they did for a few years. Now I tend to buy them from Boots.

Audrey’s probably weren’t from Boots

I find people who get turned on by sunglasses an odd bunch. People obsess over them, don’t they? Gucci sunglasses, Chanel sunglasses, Miu Miu sunglasses. ‘Oh my god where are your sunglasses from?’ is a line I’ve heard people say quite a lot to others (never about my Boots pairs, strangely). They’re summer status symbols but I’m reluctant to spend literally hundreds of pounds on something that I’m going to sit on/scratch/snap/leave in the pub/leave on a plane and so on. The trouble is, I also have vitiligo (the skin condition that means you have great white blotches over your face/body where melanin is lacking), and I have to be quite careful about wearing proper sunglasses to cover my eyes in the sun. If I don’t wear sunglasses in the sun, my poor melanin-less eyes go pink because they can’t protect themselves. Pink eye. Sexyyyyyy.

On a stroll around Broadway Market on Sunday, because the sun was out and I was suddenly down two pairs, I went into Cubitt’s to have a look because my reading glasses are from there and I love them. After that I nipped into trendy new(ish?) sunglasses company Jimmy Fairly next door, but sunglasses from both those places are, like, £130+. And if I let myself buy a pair I’m fairly sure that I’ll leave them on the Tube within 24-48 hours. So, what I’m asking is does anyone have any sunglass recommendations for pairs that aren’t nine million pounds but also aren’t from Boots?

Bonus ball…

I went to Ibiza for 36 hours for WORK a couple of weeks ago, to drive and review the new Rolls Royce. You can read my review HERE if you’re after not just a £23m superyacht but also a car that starts at £275,000.