Chilling and unforgettably haunting: Cambridge Edition writer Charlotte Griffiths shares her review of Hunger & Thirst, a new horror novel by Claire Fuller.
It’s early 1987 and Ursula is 16, working at the local art school in a job found by her social worker. She’s aged out of children’s homes and is currently in a halfway house with ex-prisoners and recovering alcoholics, so is unused to family dynamics, even weird workplace ones.
Her colleague Sue defends Ursula against older men who take advantage of her naive nature, but approves when another colleague, Vince, suggests moving in with him to a house called The Underwood.
Even though it sounds like a squat, with no rent or landlord, it’s better than anything Ursula has been offered before, and she throws her stuff into a binbag and heads over to her new home – which seems to have been abandoned, entirely furnished with a couple’s belongings, and with no trace of the owners.
It isn’t long before Sue turns up and the three of them settle into uncanny domesticity among the previous occupants’ possessions, but their outlandish dares and behaviour keep getting more intense, and as the saying now goes, the ‘saxophones keep getting louder’.
1987 verses 2023
What makes this tale more unsettling is that, at the same time as this, it’s also 2023 and grown-up Ursula, now a reclusive artist, has been located by a documentary-maker to comment on her new film about the infamous events that took place at The Underwood in the summer of 1987. Having avoided media speculation for decades, Ursula is finally ready to tell her side of the story, and you won’t be able to put this down until you hear every terrifying detail.
The pages crackle with anticipation: Claire Fuller’s writing is stark and clear on the page as she jumps between teenage Ursula and clips from the documentary, where now-older characters talk haltingly about what they heard, or felt, or saw.
Chilling and unforgettably haunting, this horror isn’t one to read alone after dark.
Hunger & Thirst by Claire Fuller is out now. Find out more at penguin.co.uk.