From the author of Penance and debut novel, Boy Parts, comes a debut short story collection. Whilst not her first published work, Eliza Clark has made her first foray into the form of short stories and in doing so has given us something incredibly special. She’s Always Hungry is Clark at her best. It is the authorial voice we love but taken in new directions. Each of these stories feature characters with desires that urge to be sated, exploring what it means to be hungry with Clark’s signature dark humour and unsettling style.
The very first story, Build a Body Like Mine, hit me like a punch in the gut. In the modern age, I challenge you to a find a young woman who has not experienced issues around body image or eating habits and I myself am far from immune to this culture. Clark takes us to the dark depths of this mindset and the character in this opening story speaks of starvation and tapeworms as frankly as if it were part of any ordinary routine. It is unsparing in detail and I saw so much of my worst self in this story that it felt as though Clark had penned my own inner monologue to the page. Similarly, further into the collection, we see a young girl turn to the dark web as she struggles with acne and pleasing her much older boyfriend in Shake Well. Goth GF sees a young man obsessed with his coworker and discovering his kink and in The Problem Solver, we see how an attack on a woman and her feelings about this can become overshadowed by male bravado. These tales are cleverly woven together to create fiction that represents our darkest desires but Clark also intersperses these with wackier stories that edge into genres her previous works haven’t explored. There’s sci-fi and speculative worlds here too – the standouts being the eponymous She’s Always Hungry, a story about a matriarchal village that subverts gendered power constructs masterfully and The King, a tale that follows an immortal female cannibal through the apocalypse. The Shadow Over Little Chitaly also stood out and acted as a palate cleanser, told through Google reviews of a mysterious takeaway.
It seems as though Clark had a lot of fun with this collection. It is her playing with genre, form and narrative voice to craft a collection that will stick with readers. It is rare to find a collection where each piece is as good as the last but there are no pages spared here. There is purpose and rich edge to each story, making a small book seem weighty. I was disturbed my these stories, I was grossed out, I was confronted and I was humbled but they also made me laugh and pause for thought. I loved my time spent inside Eliza Clark’s new worlds and I can’t wait to see where she takes us next – wherever it is, I’ll be along for the ride.
Reviewed by Abi.
She's Always Hungry was published on 07/11/24 by Faber & Faber.
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