A 43-year-old computer analyst from North Dakota, Dan McKay, has won the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton prize with an opening sentence comparing a woman's embonpoint to the carburettors of a vintage motorbike.
The prize, founded in 1982 by Scott Rice, challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
This year's winning entry wastes no time in establishing situation, character and an inimitable writing style.
As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
Mitsy Ray's runner up delivers a solution to an investigation which might have provided the basis for a whole novel in only 48 words, while a special award goes to Ken Aclin's musings on the possibility of a chain of Indian steak-houses.
Perhaps 2006 is a little too far away. Perhaps a whole sentence is too much to ask. Anyone for the title of the worst possible novel?
