Many great fiction writers will tell you that writing a sex scene is not all that different from writing about anything else. (It’s about the characters, not the performance. What do they want? What would they actually say to each other? What would be the random thought running through their mind while they’re having sex? How do their bodies physically fit, and move, together and apart?).
And yet, when a sex scene is well done, it’s perhaps the most satisfying of all to read. Here, seven of the best books published in the last five years or so, by authors who reveal, through fiction, something true about desire, longing, intimacy, and the many ways we try—sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding—to connect with someone else.
Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej
It’s taut and twisted, and makes a mess of any straightforward conception of sexual agency. The narrator of Little Rabbit—a young, occasional writer—begins a sexually submissive relationship with an established choreographer. What happens next shapes the way our narrator thinks of pleasure, and art.
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Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo
There are few living writers who write about sex in a way that’s as gripping as Lisa Taddeo. For her debut (nonfiction) book, Three Women, Taddeo spent eight years researching the sex lives of American women. Her next book, the novel Animal, was an unhinged, intoxicating tale of one woman’s rage. She followed with Ghost Lover, a collection of big, thrilling stories about the devastating, wild, and mundane things we do with our longings and obsessions. (An interesting companion read to Ghost Lover would be Leslie Jamison’s essay collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn.)
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Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
One of the most romantic, and tender, novels. It’s the love story of two best friends, young Black artists (a photographer and a dancer), and it’s one of the rare novels written in the second person that really works.
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Luster by Raven Leilani
Luster opens with a (fully clothed) sex scene between Edie and Eric, who are both at work, one downtown and one uptown, and who have 23 years between them. And from there, you won’t be able to look away. Since Luster came out in Summer 2020, this is the book that so many others (on nonmonogamy and open marriages, power and privilege, and what it feels like to be young today) have been compared to. It remains a standout.
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Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney is so good at dialogue—and at revealing the spaces that exist between what was said and what was meant (or what we wished we said), and between what was said and what was heard. In part because of this, it’s so easy, and entertaining, to become invested in the intimate relationships between her characters. Rooney’s 2024 novel, Intermezzo, alternates between the perspective of two brothers: Peter is a seemingly successful, emotionally tortured lawyer in Dublin who finds himself in two very different relationships with two very different women. And Ivan is the younger brother at 22, a (somewhat) competitive chess player, who meets a woman 14 years older than him while traveling to a chess club. The sex scenes between Ivan and Margaret are some the very best—you’ll keep thinking about the things they say to each other.
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Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
To read Garth Greenwell is to remind you that a sentence can break your heart. Intense and compact, Cleanness is the story of an American teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria—and his attempts there to make sense of love and loss, and the intersection of the two.
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The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
A National Book Award finalist, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, and winner of the Story Prize: This collection of stories (“How to Make Love to a Physicist,” “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands,” and seven more) will surprise you, again and again. It looks at four generations of women and girls, and the tensions between their desires and their faith. If you love seeing what happens when someone stops trying so hard to be good—it’s for you.
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