contortive

Then, with a contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face downward upon the ground-dead.

The Pomp of the Lavilettes, Volume 2 Gilbert Parker 1897

Then, with a contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face downward upon the ground-dead.

The Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Gilbert Parker Gilbert Parker 1897

Then, with a contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face downward upon the ground-dead.

The Pomp of the Lavilettes, Complete Gilbert Parker 1897

In the Guardian today, progressive paladin Ken Gude - the Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress, no less - gives us a bravura display of the contortive arts in rationalizing the new Leader's decision to keep quashing evidence of American torture.

Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque 2009

The problem is that not enough of this contortive plot is realised as vivid or vital writing on the page; the novel feels gestural, assembled, a simulacra with neither the power that such subject matter should pack nor the prose-master persuasiveness that another structurally playful author - Nabokov, say - might deploy.

Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk 2009

The problem is that not enough of this contortive plot is realised as vivid or vital writing on the page; the novel feels gestural, assembled, a simulacra with neither the power that such subject matter should pack nor the prose-master persuasiveness that another structurally playful author - Nabokov, say - might deploy.

Culture | guardian.co.uk 2009