She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark: Review by Ian Mond

She’s Always Hungry, Eliza Clark (Harper Perennial 978-0-06339-326-4, $17.99, 240pp, tp) November 2024.

Eliza Clark has been on my radar for several years since her debut novel, Boy Parts, was released by Influx Press in 2020, followed by her best-selling second novel, Penance. (You won’t be surprised to learn that I own both but have read neither.) Her eclectic first collection, She’s Always Hungry, which gathers 11 stories that run the genre gamut, felt like the perfect introduction to her work.

Clark doesn’t hold back with the collection’s opening piece, “Build a Body Like Mine”. Presented as an advertorial promoting a new weight-loss supplement, the story tackles body dysmorphia in a way that is both confronting and nauseating, particularly when the true nature of the product is revealed. As exaggerated as the story is, it’s disturbingly easy to imagine the multi-trillion-dollar global “wellness” industry monetising something as dangerous and repulsive as what Clark describes. Later in the collection, we encounter the equally repellent and unnerving “Shake Well”, about a 15-year-old girl with severe acne. She is given an experimental skin treatment by her ne’er-do-well and much older boyfriend, Kyle. The cream, though excruciating to apply, gives the narrator flawless alabaster features – fragile as porcelain and envied by all. But when her flesh cracks, the ick factor rises several notches: “I touch my face again, and I swear a clump of something just comes off. It lands on the carpet with a splat. I pick it up – it’s like jelly, unset jelly, those packed-lunch pots of jelly when they’ve been in your locker all day and they’ve melted.”

“The Problem Solver” isn’t as visceral as “Build a Body Like Mine” or “Shake Well”, but it’s no less challenging. The story deals with sexual violence, though we are spared the details of the abuse. The piece is instead about the aftermath as Juliet’s friend Oscar drags her to the local pub so he can confront and beat the shit out of Juliet’s abuser. It’s a canny, if not cynical, piece about “white knighting,” with Oscar making things worse, deepening Juliet’s trauma. The title story, “She’s Always Hungry”, takes us to a different kind of pub, this one set in a secondary world. Here, the men’s violent behaviour alarms the matriarchs who run the village, leading them to suspect that one of the “finfolk” (a type of si­ren) has bewitched a man. The story is dark and unsettling, reminiscent of the work of Margo Lanagan and Angela Slatter.

If all this sounds grim and discomfiting, fear not – Clark has a wicked sense of humour. “The Shadow Over Little Chitaly” is easily one of the funniest stories I’ve read in years – to the degree that my wife thought something was wrong with me as I struggled to catch my breath from all the laughing. The story is structured as a series of scathing reviews of a takeaway joint that promises a fusion of Italian and Chinese cuisine. The food is dreadful – think plain pizza topped with “entire flipping Chinese” or calzones stuffed with a random assortment of prawns, pork, and noodles – and, despite the restaurant being miles away, the order is delivered instantly, as if the driver is already standing by the door, waiting for the customer to press send on the app. The absurdity of the premise – particularly the light-speed delivery – is matched by the incredulous, angry reviews – especially the one patron who keeps ordering out of a perverse curiosity despite the food making them sick.

Equally funny, but with lashings of cannibalism and gore, is “The King”, my favourite piece and one of three science fiction stories in the collection. (The other two, “Hollow Bones” and “Extinction Event”, are also very good; Clark could easily turn her hand to space opera – with added body horror). “The King” tells the story of an apex predator, the last of her species, whose father once ruled Earth before their kind wiped themselves out. Now, working as a marketing executive for a mobile phone company, she spends her day watching porn at work and eating human flesh at home while awaiting the end of the world. Clark clearly loves her main character: the violence, the crudeness, the superiority complex, and the fact that “aside from water and human flesh, diet cola is the only sustenance” she can tolerate. What’s impressive about “The King” is its restraint. Not in terms of the savagery – there’s plenty of that – but with a narrator this grotesque and snide, it would have been tempting to go novella length. But, like many of the stories collected, Clark understands the power, the intensity, and the impact that comes with brevity.

The joy of reading She’s Always Hungry lies in never knowing what kind of story you’ll encounter next. Whether dark and cruel, absurd and hilarious, thoughtful and bittersweet, or operatic and apocalyptic, Clark’s variety keeps you on your toes. I’m now eyeing off those novels; I just have to find the time to read them.

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This review and more like it in the January 2025 issue of Locus.

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