She’s Always Hungry , Eliza Clark’s first collection of short stories, is a mixed bag. The 30-year-old author, who last year was listed as one of Granta ’s Best of Young British Novelists, is renowned for her fearless evisceration of contemporary life, specifically young womanhood. Her debut novel Boy Parts , the story of Irina, a sadistic photographer, was a hit in 2020.
Following that, last year’s Penance was an intricate exploration of true crime that centred around a group of teenage girls who killed their classmate. Much of She’s Always Hungry follows a similarly gruesome path. Each of these 11 stories is concerned with a human hunger – be that for food, sex or power – and peppered with violence.
Wisely, a content note precedes them, advising readers that the collection contains “themes and subject matter some readers may find disturbing”. Just as wisely, a more detailed “content guide” is included at the book’s end. Content warnings have been the subject of culture-war clashes in recent years, but the approach is sensible here.
Clark’s visceral style means she does not hold back. “Build a Body Like Mine”, the collection’s first story and one of its strongest, is a gripping account of a woman’s experience with an eating disorder. After years of weight fluctuation, she develops “a perfect pointy hourglass” figure, with “torpedo tits and xylophone ribs”.
How did she manage it? “For months, I had been incubating a parasite,” she.
