The AtelierBook Club

Hunger and Thirst

by Claire Fuller

In 1987, sixteen-year-old Ursula is trying to build a life after childhood trauma and years spent in and out of the care system. A job delivering mail at a local art school brings her into the orbit of Sue and a group of new friends living at The Underwood—a mysterious squat with a troubling past. Hungry not only for food but for love, acceptance, and belonging, Ursula is drawn deeper into the group and into Sue’s increasingly extreme demands. When a terrible dare crosses a line, the consequences follow Ursula far beyond that summer. Thirty-six years later, Ursula has become a renowned but reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London. When true-crime documentary filmmaker Emma Zahini begins investigating an unsolved disappearance, Ursula’s carefully protected identity—and the past she has spent decades trying to escape—begin to unravel. From Claire Fuller, Hunger and Thirst is an eerie exploration of loneliness, female friendship, belonging, and the dangerous distance between wanting something and needing it.