Hunger and Thirst

“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 Sky