Bad Sex

“I drink, I hurt myself and the people around me, and then I write.” Brett is in Central America, away from her husband, when she begins a love affair with his friend, Eduard. Tragedy and comedy are properly joined at the hip in this loosely autobiographical book about infidelity, drinking, and the postponing of repercussions under the sun. Though coming undone is something we all try to avoid, Martin reminds us that going off the rails is sometimes a part of the ride.

“Bad Sex is a novel about how beautiful a place the world can be when everything is coming apart, and the closest we have to a modern equivalent to The Sun Also Rises,” said Giancarlo DiTrapano, publisher of Tyrant Books. “This book will make Clancy Martin a household name.”

Praise for Bad Sex:

"A great book of bad behavior." —Publishers Weekly

“BAD SEX is like a diamond, cut clean, dangerously sharp, brutally hard and yet paradoxically beautiful, ruthlessly honing in on the plight of a woman caught in the throes of alcoholism, desire, marriage and adultery. Like Camus in The Stranger, Martin digs into the philosophical through precise narrative, exposing the big questions for the reader to answer.”

-David Means, author of Assorted Fire Events and The Spot

"A flushed and riveting account of some desperately, deliciously bad choices." –– Daniel Handler, author of the national bestseller, We Are Pirates

"Money, sex and deception is an irresistible combination, and "Bad Sex" is un-put-downable. Brett is a lovable heroine--a lusty, wrongheaded writer, flawed and rueful, yet charging ahead. She wants everything she knows is bad for her--alcohol, drugs, and to have violent, lurid sex with her husband's rapscallion banker--and we root for her all the way." -Rebecca Curtis

"I loved this book through and through." -Culture Vultures

Praise for the work of Clancy Martin:

“A revelatory, sometimes disturbing, look at the many stages of love, an elephant-in-the-room topic that rarely gets such in-depth treatment.” Salon

"A central pleasure of Love and Lies—an unsettling one at times—is realizing, I know that fantasy; I've been burned by that hoodwink; or, I told my man an equally selfish lie yesterday." ELLE

“'Love and Lies' is a delight to read. Martin is erudite without being pedantic, and when he slips into raconteur mode the book adopts a conspiratorial tone." The Boston Globe

“With engaging prose, genuine insight and often hilarious stories, Clancy Martin uses the best writers among philosophers—like Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Bonhoeffer—and the best philosophers among writers—like Shakespeare, Proust and Adrienne Rich—to show us that intimacy and eros are much more complex and deceptive than most of us would like to admit. Perhaps paradoxically, this is one of the most honest books I have read about love.” —Simon Critchley, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers

“Martin has a poetic sensibility. . . . He gives a mesmerizing appeal to the setting of an alexandrite necklace and the delicate artistry involved in shaping a diamond.” —The New Yorker

“How to Sell is a bleak, funny, unforgiving novel. Its a little like Dennis Cooper with a philosophical intelligence, or Raymond Carver without hope. But mostly its like itself. It is about how we buy and sell everything—merchandise, drugs, sex, trust, power, peace of mind, religion, friendship, and each other. Its written extremely finely, with wit and enviable self-control. A genuinely fresh, disconcerting voice.” —Zadie Smith

“Crisp, cinematic . . . Martin writes with no-nonsense punch, detailing the schemes—fake certificates, ‘antiques—shady jewelers have been running for centuries. If the sentences in How to Sell feel lived-in, well, thats because the author himself is a former con man, borrowing liberally from the gem-scam life before going straight (Hes a philosophy professor now; go figure.) By the time youre hooked on the books insidious plot twists, concerning sibling rivalry and a meth-addicted mistress who sleeps better hooking than she does selling Faux-lexes, youre blissfully unaware youre downing a metaphor: No commission can buy you a soul.”—Adam Baer, GQ

This is the second novel from Clancy Martin. FSG's "How to Sell" was the first.

This novel deals, primarily, with an adulterous love affair. It also talks about alcoholism, self-destruction, and what it means to love. The protagonist, Brett, a recovering alcoholic writer living in Mexico, begins a love affair with Eduard, her husband's banker.

Clancy Martin is a Canadian philosopher, novelist, essayist and translator. His debut novel How to Sell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was a Times Literary Supplement "Best Book of 2009", and a "Best Book of 2009" for The Guardian, Publisher's Weekly, The Kansas City Star. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, and is Professor of Business Ethics at the Bloch School of Management (UMKC). His writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, Ethics, The Journal of the History of Philosophy, GQ, Esquire, Details, Bookforum, Vice, Men's Journal, and many other newspapers, magazines and journals, and has been translated into more than thirty languages. He has also won DAAD Fellowships and the Pushcart Prize. He just published a book of essays with FSG called "Love and Lies." He has three daughters, Zelly, Margaret and Portia. He is married to the writer Amie Barrodale.