She is always hungry, That of Eliza Clark first collection of short stories, is a mixed bag.

The 30-year-old author, who last year was among the Sotck exchange‘s Best of Young British Novelists, is renowned for its fearless evisceration of contemporary life, particularly young women. His first novel Boy’s Partsthe story of Irina, a sadistic photographer, was a hit in 2020. Following this, last year, Penance was a complex exploration of true crime centered around a group of teenage girls who killed their classmate.

A large part of She is always hungry follows an equally horrible path. Each of these 11 stories concerns human hunger – whether for food, sex or power – and peppered with violence.

Appropriately, a content note precedes them, informing readers that the collection contains “themes and topics that some readers may find disturbing.” Just as helpfully, a more detailed “content guide” is included at the end of the book. Content Warnings have been the subject of cultural conflicts in recent years, but the approach here is sound. Clark’s visceral style means she doesn’t hold back.

“Build a Body Like Mine,” the first story in the collection and one of the strongest, is a gripping account of one woman’s experience with a eating disorder. After years of weight fluctuation, she developed “a perfect pointed hourglass figure”, with “torpedo breasts and xylophone ribs”. How did she succeed? “For months, I had been incubating a parasite,” she admits. The narrator has now gone into “the worm business” and sells them to help others on their weight loss journey. “Use discount code LoveIt at checkout to get twenty percent off your second order,” is the searing punchline.

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The main story is another intriguing story. Set in a matriarchal setting fishing villagehere it is men who suffer sexist violence. Clark draws on Orkney folklore to introduce the village to a member of the sea shapeshifters who kidnap unsuspecting fishermen. Clark’s descriptions are brilliantly palpable: “It was totally hairless, moist and spongy to the touch. His whole body was slippery like a hagfish; smooth and covered in a thin sheet of mucus. The mermaid-like creature lures the narrator to a dangerous end.

Contemporary themes that Clark previously wrote about reappear: sexual assaultthe coercive relationships, the extremes some will go to look good. Another winning story, “Shake Well,” begins with two nauseating pages devoted to compression points, while “Company Man” is narrated by a woman who lives under a new identity after committing a violent crime.

Elsewhere is speculative fiction, notably “Extinction Event,” in which the scientific narrator is held on a base far from friends and family and tasked with developing solutions to the climate crisis. In the totally bizarre “The King”, a “non-human entity” and “member of the master race” works in technology until the apocalypse arrives and she can start ruling the world again, like… is his birthright. It’s refreshing to read an author who doesn’t feel pigeonholed by the genre in which she found success, but these stories feel broad compared to Clark’s typically razor-sharp approach.

But what seriously lets the book down is “The Shadow Over Little Chitaly,” less of a story than a list of mock, cringe-filled reviews of a book. take away restaurant. “They shouldn’t do Chinese if they don’t know what they’re doing, just stick to making absolutely mint pizza,” reads just one part of one review. Stupid lines like this fill 11 entire pages.

This disappointing inclusion is a real shame, because Eliza Clark is a writer who has proven elsewhere her ability to be fabulously entertaining – and intelligently so.

Published by Faber on November 7, £9.99