She's Always Hungry is one of the best collections of the year, and I don’t mean just out of this year’s horror offerings, but out of all of 2024’s literary releases . . . . Constantly surprising, unexpectedly funny and wildly entertaining, the 11 stories in this book fully embrace the variety of genre elements that fall under the speculative fiction umbrella, and the result is spectacular.” — New York Times Book Review
“A firecracker of a book that blends horror with speculative fiction and fantasy as it delves into themes of gender and power.” — The Guardian
"Each story lands like a quick slap, the impact landing a little after its conclusion. " — GQ (UK)
“These stories come at you like the best punches of a great boxer: fast, hard, with devastating precision and from strange angles. Clark demonstrates remarkable range, with a tale of body horror, a yarn about an immortal being ruling over a postapocalyptic world, a chronicle of human cruelty and more, making this a collection that is as impossible to categorize as it is to put down.” — New York Times Book Review, “The Best Horror Fiction of 2024”
“Readers of horror and speculative fiction will thoroughly enjoy this fun collection of short stories . . . . The feminist themes and rich characters of She's Always Hungry will stick with readers long after they close the book.” — Booklist
“In a new collection of short stories, Clark shows off a growing mastery of the absurd, the bizarre, and body horror… An unsettling collection of stories that solidifies Clark as a writer to watch in the world of horror.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The bestselling author of Boy Parts is back with a collection of stories that have her dark sense of humor… with a little body horror thrown in for good measure. — Book Riot
“She’s Always Hungry is packed with darkly funny, often speculative pieces, each with a hefty punch. . . .Inventive and incendiary, Clark’s stories never shirk from the challenges in their content or their broader themes. Make no mistake: they are disturbing. . . .But it’s Clark’s ability to attack taboo topics of gender, sexuality, violence, and the power dynamics that intertwine them that makes her collection unmissable. Discover: A daring collection of dark and often speculative stories, Eliza Clark’s She’s Always Hungry is a relentless joyride that explores systemic power dynamics and an everyday lust for the unattainable.” — Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“Clark wields her pen with lethal precision, mastering horror’s ability to get under your skin and interrogate social topics in an entirely different light . . . . There is not a weak story amongst the bunch . . . . She's Always Hungry was absolutely sublime and you will be left ravenous for more.” — The Nerd Daily
"She's Always Hungry is a howlingly good collection by an author at the very height of her powers. By turns funny, repulsive, and tender, it is a collection that begs you to pick a favourite story and yet confounds you at every turn with its range and dexterity. Clark is a writer whose mastery of voice and genre is impossible not to envy." — Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea and Private Rites
"No one is writing like Eliza Clark." — Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies
"Totally wild." — Claire Kohda, author of Woman, Eating
“Here are eleven surreal, troubling and frankly gross little worlds. How I loved my time in them.” — Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes
“A delectable smörgåsbord of snack-sized weird, She’s Always Hungry is a meal for the most avant garde queens. I loved every story, licked the plate clean and left no crumbs.” — Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller
"Scary and satirical, Clark's debut collection is unsettling, repulsive and darkly hilarious." — Juno Dawson, bestselling author of Her Majesty's Royal Coven
"Visceral and transgressive, eerie and playful, sometimes depraved and often laugh-out-loud funny." — Colin Walsh, author of Kala
"I gobbled them up in one sitting." — Camilla Grudova, author of The Coiled Serpent
2024-10-11
In a new collection of short stories, Clark shows off a growing mastery of the absurd, the bizarre, and body horror.
In “Build a Body Like Mine,” a nameless narrator grows a cult following on the internet after admitting she uses parasites—tapeworms—to help her lose weight and stay in shape. In “Hollow Bones,” a young woman recovers on a space station after an incident she can’t remember which left her with a strange, glowing injury. “The Shadow Over Little Chitaly,” perhaps the collection’s standout, is told through increasingly bizarre reviews of an Italian-Chinese-Australian fusion restaurant that keeps bungling takeout orders and might or might not be of this world. The tongue-in-cheek narrative structure and the reviewers’ surreal interactions with the restaurant create a story that’s laugh-out-loud funny while maintaining a sense of unease. Unfortunately, while many of the stories are successfully built on strange and engaging concepts, others have a tendency to end abruptly and without the skin-crawling payout that readers expect from a writer dabbling in body horror, visiting distant planets, and awakening eldritch creatures. When they’re not uncanny or causing a general sense of discomfort, the stories can feel more like vignettes than finished products, blurry snapshots of modern life and explorations of humanity that are over as quickly as they’ve begun. The result is a tantalizing and sometimes uncomfortable book—especially for more squeamish readers—that could have provided more for those wanting an exploration of the base human needs, especially hunger, in its literal and metaphorical senses.
An unsettling collection of stories that solidifies Clark as a writer to watch in the world of horror.
