Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller: A haunting story about the ache to belong

Some hungers have nothing to do with food. Some thirsts cannot be quenched. In Hunger and Thirst, Claire Fuller builds a quietly unsettling novel about loneliness, guilt, and the dangerous places people wander when they want love badly enough.

Claire Fuller has long excelled at writing stories that feel atmospheric without sacrificing emotional complexity. Readers familiar with Our Endless Numbered Days (one of my all-time favorites!), Swimming Lessons, or Bitter Orange will recognize her gift for creating settings that feel slightly unsteady, places where human relationships become as unsettling as any ghost story. Hunger and Thirst, releasing June 2, 2026, continues that tradition while leaning more openly into gothic territory.

The novel moves between 1987 and the present day, following Ursula, a woman carrying the weight of one terrible act and the long shadow it cast across her life. As a teenager, Ursula has already experienced more instability than anyone should. After childhood trauma and years moving through foster homes and the care system, she finds small footholds: a mail delivery job at an art school, a room in a halfway house, and eventually a group of friends who seem to offer something she has desperately lacked.

At the center of that fragile new world is Sue. Ursula falls hard for Sue and for the chaotic, makeshift family orbiting around her. Fuller understands something painfully human: wanting to belong can feel like starvation. Ursula is hungry—not simply for food, though physical hunger appears repeatedly—but for affection, acceptance, and the feeling of being chosen.

That need becomes the novel’s emotional engine. When Ursula joins a squat at the mysterious Underwood house, the story takes on a steadily mounting sense of dread. Sue’s demands become more extreme, and eventually Ursula carries out a terrible dare with consequences that shape the rest of her life.

One of the novel’s most fascinating threads is not simply what Ursula did, but what happens after. Ursula openly confesses. Repeatedly. She tells people what happened. She tells the police. She insists on the truth. Yet nobody believes her. Instead, everyone assumes she is a vulnerable teenager manipulated by a violent young man into accepting blame for his crimes. Her insistence becomes so relentless that she eventually realizes an awful possibility: if she keeps telling the truth, people may decide she is delusional rather than guilty. She risks being “sectioned,” institutionalized not as a murderer, but as someone believed to be mentally unstable.

That idea becomes one of the novel’s strongest and most unsettling themes: what happens when you tell the truth and nobody accepts it?

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Years later, Ursula has built a life of sorts. She finishes her A-levels, attends art school, and eventually becomes a respected sculptor working under a pseudonym. Though she has become successful, fear never loosens its grip. She lives in hiding, always terrified that the man accused of the crime—and confined to a psychiatric institution—might one day be released and come searching for her.

The novel unfolds through a middle-aged Ursula looking backward as a documentary filmmaker attempts to uncover the truth surrounding the old disappearance. She refuses to participate but cannot escape the story as the documentary airs, revisiting the events she has spent decades trying to bury. Structurally, Fuller handles this beautifully. The dual timelines create momentum without feeling gimmicky, and Ursula’s retrospective narration allows the story to reveal itself carefully, layer by layer. The novel is exceptionally controlled in its construction.

There are also thoughtful explorations of children raised in care and adoption systems. Ursula wants so badly to become part of Sue’s family that she overlooks warning signs and painful contradictions. One particularly painful moment arrives when she overhears Sue’s family speaking dismissively about children in care, seemingly forgetting Ursula herself grew up moving between foster homes and children’s residences. It is a small moment, but Fuller understands that cruelty often arrives casually rather than dramatically.

And threading through all of it is the supernatural presence itself. The title is not accidental. Hunger runs through Ursula’s life in every possible form. Hunger for food. Hunger for affection. Hunger for identity. Alongside it exists the thirst of something ancient and unsettling attached to the abandoned house, a presence connected to a vanished body, and unfinished debts.

The question lingering over the entire novel becomes whether Ursula can outrun either one. Can she escape what she did? Can she escape what followed her? Or do some debts simply wait?

There is a lot more to say about Hunger and Thirst, but saying too much would steal the pleasure—and dread—of discovery. This is one of those novels where much of the impact comes from gradually realizing where Fuller is taking you.

I found it compelling and thoughtfully constructed, even if I hesitate to say much more for fear of giving away the machinery underneath. It is well-written, structurally confident, and rich with themes beyond its haunted-house premise. Readers looking for explosive horror may find it quieter than expected, but those who appreciate psychological tension and literary gothic fiction will likely find much to admire. Claire Fuller once again proves she knows how to write about people who carry loneliness like a second skin.

Ursula spends much of her life trying to tell the truth and not being believed. Which would be harder: living with guilt for something you did, or living with the knowledge that no one accepts your version of events? Share your thoughts in the comments.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Related Content

• Claire Fuller: I changed career in my 40s. You can make this big shift (The Irish Times)
• Guest Author – Claire Fuller on finding inspiration in place (The Literary Sofa)
• Claire Fuller: Try not to compare yourself to other writers (Curtis Brown Creative)
• From Editing to Publication: Proofs, ARCs, Quotes and Blurbs (Claire Fuller)

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