England. The summer of 1987. An empty house whose owners met a terrible end. A small group of friends each trying to carve out their own future while running from their past. And a strange series of events that forever alters each of their lives.
This is how Claire Fuller sets the stage for her sixth novel, Hunger and Thirst.
Ursula Major is no stranger to an untethered existence. Her early days were spent moving from place to place as her young mother eked out a meager existence playing music. When Ursula was just 8 years old, however, her mother unexpectedly died. The remainder of her formative years were spent in the care system, bouncing back and forth between foster homes and children’s homes.
Now a young adult, aged 16, Ursula wants to take charge of her life. She has a steady job working in the mail room of a local art school. Her social worker found her a bed in a halfway house, Yet she longs for a more stable home. She is desperate—hungry—to belong.
Enter Sue, a fiercely wild young woman who becomes the closest thing to a best friend Ursula has ever known. Sue convinces their co-worker Vince to let Ursula become his roommate—not in a rented apartment or shared flat, but squatting in an abandoned house known as the Underwood. At first, Ursula embraces her newfound independence, but the more time they spend in the house, the stranger things become. Sue begins pushing Ursula to do something dramatic and unforgivable, and when she finally acts on these dares, things spiral out of control.
Hunger and Thirst is gripping from the very first sentence and the success of the novel hinges on two literary devices: the structure and the murky line between what is real and what is not. The story is told by Ursula from the present day, flashing back to that fateful summer at The Underwood. Now a famously private sculptor who goes by the name Uschi, she is forced to privately recall these events when she learns of an upcoming documentary that chronicles the experience for public consumption. This juxtaposition of Ursula’s present with her past makes for an intriguing read.
Fuller leaves the reader questioning if Ursula’s version of these events is the truth she believes it to be. A thread of constant second-guessing is woven through the novel, echoing the same question over and over: What really happened? This technique is incredibly effective at pulling the reader into the story, making the book extremely difficult to put down.
Each page builds on the last to create an all-consuming world and cast of characters. Even with the potentially speculative elements of the story—which you must read to learn about—the novel reads as authentic and believable. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the connections to the author’s own life. Fuller herself says: “Of all my novels it’s the one that has the most of me in it.” Hunger and Thirst is set in the town where she once resided, in the art school she once attended, and even in the squat where she once lived.
One of the most interesting aspects of this story is this house as a character itself. The novel echoes—both overtly and through implication—some of horror’s most iconic works, including The Shining. The Underwood gives everyone who enters an unsettled feeling not altogether unlike The Overlook Hotel—a whisper of something unnatural, a wild impulse, or a gut instinct that warns them away. Fuller even plays on specific details from the film, like the squeaky voice and pointed finger Danny Torrence uses for his creepy imaginary friend Tony. In the course of the novel, Ursula’s friend Sue even compares the house’s influence to Hitchcock’s infamous film Psycho, saying: “That’s how the Underwood makes me feel. You must feel it too. Like I want to tear the place down and break my own rules.”
Hunger and Thirst is an exploration of the lengths humans will go to in order to quench their hunger and thirst to belong. Some may say this extended metaphor, as well as the literal incorporation of hunger and thirst into the story, are perhaps a bit on the nose—but it really works. If you are looking for a striking new work of literary horror, a psychologically twisted coming-of-age tale, Claire Fuller delivers.
Hunger and Thirst is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 2nd 2026.
Will you be picking up Hunger and Thirst? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis
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 with a 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.
