{"id":5417,"date":"2026-06-05T12:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/the-uneasy-fullness-of-hunger-thirst\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T12:49:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:49:19","slug":"the-uneasy-fullness-of-hunger-thirst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/the-uneasy-fullness-of-hunger-thirst\/","title":{"rendered":"The uneasy fullness of \u2018Hunger &#038; Thirst\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/clairefuller.co.uk\/\">Claire Fuller<\/a> carefully sculpts her sixth novel, \u201cHunger &amp; Thirst,\u201d into a half-sung haunt, a calliope of ghost songs: never fully grasped and impossible to forget. Threaded through each page is a panging hunger \u2014 for food, yes, but belonging more so. It asks, with growing cruelty, how far someone might go to be accepted and how much they\u2019re willing to give up to remain there.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The novel follows Ursula, a 16-year-old who has spent years drifting through the foster care system of 1987 pre-children\u2019s rights England, after a senseless childhood trauma leaves her orphaned. One day, her social worker finds her a job delivering mail at a local art school, which draws her into a strange, tightly wound group of coworkers led by the young, magnetic and volatile Sue. For Ursula, who has spent her life on the outside, the promise of a group she belongs to \u2014 no matter how strange \u2014 is irresistible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ursula and Sue\u2019s relationship grows increasingly complicated as Ursula yearns for Sue\u2019s family, and Sue yearns to escape it. A single, terrible act sets the central mystery in motion, and it haunts Ursula from that point forward. Whether that haunting is psychological, supernatural or an undetermined mix of the two is a question the novel refuses to resolve.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Decades later, Ursula lives under a pseudonym as a reclusive and successful sculptor in London. Her carefully constructed anonymity crumbles when a true crime filmmaker investigates a long-unsolved disappearance. The narrative shifts between timelines, only to reveal it was never about solving the mystery; instead, it circles the same festering wounds of Ursula\u2019s regret-laden past.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fuller\u2019s greatest strength here is her command of atmosphere. The horror in \u201cHunger &amp; Thirst\u201d is genuinely effective, accumulating throughout the book and leaving goosebumps racing across your skin. Scenes start and immediately fall into a terrifying pattern \u2014 the same haunt inevitably coming back for Ursula, allowing dread to build until it becomes unbearable. It is easy to visualize the novel\u2019s most disturbing moments; they play out with a cinematic clarity that lingers long after the page is turned.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The prose itself is deceptively simple, propelling the reader forward while keeping them inside Ursula\u2019s perspective. This closeness is crucial, because<strong> <\/strong>the novel thrives on uncertainty. Ursula is an unreliable narrator, and the text offers no stable ground from which to interpret the events she is witnessing. Is she truly being haunted? Is she reliving her trauma so intensely that it manifests externally? Fuller resists easy answers, and the ambiguity becomes one of the novel\u2019s most compelling qualities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At its best, \u201cHunger &amp; Thirst\u201d is gripping, even breathtaking. But its structure occasionally works against it. The first half of the novel introduces mysteries at a rapid pace, only to resolve many of them within a few short chapters. Key questions about Ursula\u2019s past, her greatest fears and heaviest guilt are revealed sooner than expected, leaving the latter half of the book with less narrative propulsion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, the story becomes increasingly centered on a single, unresolved mystery, revisited repeatedly, yet always from the same angle: What\u2019s happened to Sue? While this repetition reinforces the novel\u2019s thematic focus on the struggle to let go of trauma, it can also begin to feel narratively thin. What initially feels haunting can, over time, begin to feel overextended.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yet, the lack of resolution is also part of the novel\u2019s power. Fuller denies the reader a clean ending. Without a definitive explanation or clear line between reality and psychosis, there is never a true sense of closure. The haunting persists for the reader as much as it does for Ursula.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the more intriguing threads running through the book is its engagement with the ethics of true crime. The filmmaker\u2019s investigation into Ursula\u2019s past highlights the way real lives are reshaped and disrupted by the act of retelling. The novel critiques the genre\u2019s tendency to turn traumas into <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.law.uga.edu\/jipl\/vol27\/iss2\/6\/\">nail-biting narratives,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thehilltoponline.com\/2024\/10\/28\/true-crime-media-awareness-or-exploitation\/\">asking who benefits<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/theappeal.org\/true-crime-shows-exploit-and-lie-about-incarcerated-women\/\">from these stories<\/a> and who is left to live with <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/daniellerousseau\/2024\/02\/27\/true-crime-retraumatization-of-victims\/\">the consequences<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The artistic influences within the novel are equally notable. Sculpture and film are not just background details but are central to the way the story is told. Fuller, who studied sculpture, brings a tactile awareness to Ursula\u2019s passion, while the novel\u2019s pacing, visual clarity and frequent references suggests the author\u2019s deep infatuation with classic horror cinema. These elements give the book a textured, near-physical quality, as if the story itself has been shaped and carved by Fuller\u2019s influences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, not all of the novel\u2019s character work is equally successful. Sue, in particular, can feel frustratingly underdeveloped despite being the centerpiece of the novel. Her outspoken, often abrasive brand of feminism \u2014 which includes insulting women\u2019s bodies and berating housewives \u2014 reads as contradictory without always being fully explored. While this may be intentionally positioning Sue as a figure who is misunderstood or internally consistent, the clarity around her motivations can make her feel more shallow than complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite its occasional uneven pacing and character shortcomings, \u201cHunger &amp; Thirst\u201d remains a compelling and deeply unsettling read. It is less interested in solving its mysteries than inhabiting them: exploring what it means to live with unanswered questions, unresolved guilt and a past that refuses to stay buried. Like the haunting at its center, \u201cHunger &amp; Thirst\u201d offers no neat closure, but instead asks how to live in the wake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Daily Arts Summer Senior Editor Estlin Salah can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/books\/the-uneasy-fullness-of-hunger-thirst\/mailto:essalah@umich.edu\"><em>essalah@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Claire Fuller carefully sculpts her sixth novel, \u201cHunger &amp; Thirst,\u201d into a half-sung haunt, a calliope of ghost songs: never fully grasped and impossible to forget. Threaded through each page is a panging hunger \u2014 for food, yes, but belonging more so. It asks, with growing cruelty, how far someone might go to be accepted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[4865,307,4866,4864],"class_list":["post-5417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-fullness","tag-hunger","tag-thirst","tag-uneasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5419,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions\/5419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}