"She's always hungry" By Eliza Clarke

A Literary Feast of Dark Humor and Originality

She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark is a collection of eleven short stories that, through the lens of “hunger,” masterfully blend body horror, psychological drama, and social satire. The tales shift effortlessly between raw realism, chilling science fiction, and grotesque folklore, all delivered in Clark’s razor-sharp prose that fuses repulsion with fascination. Clark never shies away from unsettling her readers, confronting our obsessions—the perfect body, guilt, the thirst for power—with scenarios where flesh itself becomes a battleground, striking a delicate balance between discomfort and guilty laughter.

In “Build a Body Like Mine,” the opening story, the protagonist extols a “vermi-elixir” that promises the body of your dreams: a parasite that feeds on her fat. Clark depicts with nightmarish clarity how the body melts and recomposes, right up to the moment when the host literally expels the intruder… into the toilet. The power of the story lies in its metaphor: the iron grip of body-image obsession taken to its extreme. It’s an allegory of the self-inflicted authoritarian regime, both terrifying and oddly hilarious—a warped mirror of our own aesthetic anxieties.

Another standout, “The Shadow Over Little Chitaly,” unfolds as a series of online reviews for a fantastical Sino-Italian takeaway. Each customer note ratchets up the unease—overpowering aromas, faint Lovecraftian hints—until the final confession of a diner horrified by what they truly ingested. This innocuous-seeming epistolary style becomes a vessel for slow-burn horror, showcasing Clark’s skill at wielding dread alongside biting humor to probe our relationship with consumption and the unknown.

Beneath the shock and grotesque imagery, She’s Always Hungry carries a potent social message: hunger is never purely physical. It masks loneliness, a quest for identity, or even a form of feminist revenge that consumes the characters from within. Whether it’s a coastal villager struck by a “marine madness” under the sway of fearsome women, or a young woman whose obsession devours her soul, Clark unveils our deepest flaws with merciless irony.

In short, if you crave stories where dark humor courts unease, where every tale is a finely tuned experiment in murderous exaggeration, She’s Always Hungry beckons with open arms—and hungry jaws. An essential read for anyone who loves to laugh on the edge of bodily horror.