Hunger and Thirst

From the celebrated author of Bitter Orange and Swimming Lessons comes an “atmospheric, psychologically vivid, and unputdownable” new novel of complicated friendship and the desperate need to belong (Alice Winn)

1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job delivering mail at a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and some new friends, including wild-child Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at the Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist this hodgepodge family. But as Sue’s behavior and demands become more extreme, Ursula, who has always been hungry—for food, but more importantly for love and acceptance—carries out her friend’s terrible dare. And, for this, Ursula finds herself literally haunted.

Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned but reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by a true-crime documentarian researching an unsolved disappearance. But the filmmaker is not the only one who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without—and if they will finally make her pay for her past mistakes.

Part gothic horror, part coming-of-age, and a with contemporary twist on the haunted-house story, Hunger and Thirst is a chilling tale of loneliness, of the dangerous line between wanting and needing, and of how far a person will go to truly belong.“A dare that Ursula took in adolescence is literally haunting her years later.” —Library Journal, Big Books of the Year

“Hunger and Thirst kept me up late at night, it frightened and enthralled me. Atmospheric, psychologically vivid, and unputdownable.” —Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam

“Unremittingly unsettling, propulsive and tense. Claire Fuller excels at depicting outsiders and writes with such precision and economy. Truly terrifying.” —Sarah Vaughan, author of Little Disasters

“In Claire Fuller's Hunger and Thirst, we meet Ursula Major, a sixteen-year-old orphan living on her own. She finds her first real friend in Sue, a colleague at work, who helps her find a place to stay at an abandoned squat with a tragic history. As her friendship with Sue deepens, strange things begin to happen at the house, which culminates in an accident of violence with far-reaching consequences. But did something happen, or is Ursula, long traumatized by her background, unable to tell what is real from what isn't? I was enthralled by the creeping horror, rapt, utterly unable to put this book down, haunted as I was reading it and haunted still. Claire Fuller, a master of psychic suspense, has done it again.” —Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

“Harrowing and tender in turn, Hunger and Thirst is an expertly sculpted character study of a girl living in the long shadow of trauma—it gripped me immediately and didn’t let go. Ursula’s desperate hungers live in all of us, and Claire Fuller illuminates them in exquisite, exacting prose. This is the kind of book to clear a weekend for, the kind of resonant nightmare that lingers long after its end.” —Hayden Casey, author of A Harvest of Furies

“Claire Fuller has set a dauntingly high bar with her previous novels, and Hunger and Thirst does not disappoint. A gothic chiller—haunting, artful, suspenseful, complex, and cinematic, with traces of early Ian McEwan.” —William Landay, author of All That Is Mine I Carry With Me

“An absolute masterpiece. Utterly absorbing, genuinely unsettling . . . like all the most terrifying horror films of the '70s and '80s and all the most scary ghost stories.” —Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things

“Gothic, disturbing, and mesmerizingly well-written, Hunger and Thirst is like nothing I’ve read before. Claire Fuller’s ability to generate suspense, revulsion, and disquiet within a nuanced and intelligent world is second to none.” —Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane

“What an addictive, disturbing, and suspenseful book! Its cast of young characters, haunting and haunted by secrets, guilt, violence, and betrayal, reminded me of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine at her most vivid. Poor, needy Ursula, traumatized by a childhood in care and blossoming at art school is a rare creation.” —Amanda Craig, author of The Three Graces

“Love story, psychological thriller, highly literary horror—Claire Fuller pulls off all three with this brilliant novel that is familiar and frightening in equal measure. Most of all, it’s GREAT FUN. I absolutely loved it.” —Kathleen MacMahon, author Nothing But Blue SkyClaire Fuller is the author of Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize; Swimming Lessons; Bitter Orange; Unsettled Ground, which won the Costa Novel Award and was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction; and The Memory of Animals. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.