I’d never read Eliza Clark before picking up She’s Always Hungry. It’s a collection of 11 short stories that range from horror to science-fiction, climate anxiety to sexual assault. It comes with all kinds of content warnings (presented at the end of the book but referenced at the beginning, in a smart spoiler-free way).
Even the stories that didn’t connect for me were compelling and well-written. Almost every one of these stories would be an instant addition to a Friday short fiction post. They’re fast, riveting and original.
Gender dynamics play into the theme of almost every story, and Clark has a lot of interesting ideas and perspectives to share. In this Dazed Digital interview she touches on it:
Power is one of my big concerns as a writer: how power expresses itself in day-to-day relationships and how violence seems to come out of power wherever it’s being exerted. Gender is just an easy shortcut to exploring that theme. For me, I think it’s interesting that the more egalitarian society becomes, the more pushback there is against that. The way gender relations are changing now is really interesting to me. I don’t know if I have anything particularly revolutionary to say about that, but if you’re interested in sex and power, you’re always going to end up writing about gender, whether you like it or not.
My favourite in this collection is “The King”, a funny, nasty, surprising story about an immortal cannibal trying to take charge after the apocalypse.
Clark is not afraid playing with form: “Build a Body Like Mine” is a sales pitch for using parasites to achieve the perfect body, Another one, “The Shadow Over Little Chitaly” is told through Google Reviews.
Other standouts include “Shake Well” about an acne treatment, an exploitive relationship, and some real nasty business, and “Company Man” about a woman in hiding from something mysterious (which you can read some of here). “Extinction Event” is a sci-fi eco-thriller about a scientist whose discovery might save the planet. It feels out-of-place, but it’s so goddam good.
In this interview in The Guardian, she gives a couple of book suggestions that I haven’t read but will seek out:
The Sluts by Dennis Cooper, Negative Space by BR Yeager and The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
Further Reading:
Dazed Digital interview with Eliza Clark
