She’s Always Hungry Summary and Themes

Eliza Clark’s She’s Always Hungry is a bold and unsettling short story collection that plunges into the depths of human obsession, hunger, and transformation—both literal and metaphorical. 

Infused with dark humor and a keen sense of horror, these stories explore the grotesque, the uncanny, and the existential through themes of body horror, societal decay, and the monstrous aspects of human nature. From parasitic diets to eerie corporate rituals, each tale dissects the unsettling ways people consume and are consumed by their desires. Clark’s stories are sharp, eerie, and unflinchingly bizarre, making this collection a must-read for fans of horror and speculative fiction.

Summary

In Build a Body Like Mine, a woman obsessed with weight loss accidentally becomes infected with a tapeworm. Rather than seeking medical help, she embraces the parasite as a miracle solution, allowing her to eat without gaining weight. As her fixation deepens, she begins deliberately reinfecting herself, even selling tapeworm eggs to others desperate for the same results. Her quest for the “perfect” body turns grotesque, highlighting the disturbing extremes of diet culture and self-image obsession.

In The Problem Solver, Juliet confides in her friend Oscar about a traumatic assault. Rather than offering support, Oscar takes matters into his own hands, violently confronting her attacker. His actions escalate, becoming more about his personal sense of justice than Juliet’s healing. The attack goes viral within their social circle, and Juliet realizes she has lost control of her own narrative. The story is a sharp critique of performative allyship and male savior complexes.

She’s Always Hungry unfolds in a remote fishing village where women hold power while men serve as laborers. The protagonist, John, catches a strange sea creature that slowly exerts a hypnotic influence over him. As the men of the village begin disappearing into the ocean, John is convinced that the creature is offering him something greater. Manipulated and enthralled, he ultimately betrays his people, allowing the horror to take over. This eerie blend of folklore and cosmic horror explores gender roles and the seductive nature of power.

The Shadow Over Little Chitaly follows the bizarre emergence of a restaurant that defies logic. Serving absurd combinations of Chinese and Italian food, the restaurant appears on food delivery apps but has no physical location. Customers receive unsettling meals—dishes that seem to defy culinary logic or human preparation. As more people disappear after ordering from Little Chitaly, the truth behind its existence hints at something far more sinister than a ghost kitchen. This story satirizes globalization, consumer culture, and the eerie presence of digital entities beyond human control.

In Hollow Bones, a social media influencer obsessed with achieving a weightless, bird-like figure takes drastic measures to maintain her fragile aesthetic. As she pushes her body to terrifying extremes, she dreams of floating—until, one day, she literally does. This darkly satirical tale critiques influencer culture, body dysmorphia, and the pressure to conform to impossible beauty standards.

Goth GF tells the story of a young man who becomes fixated on a popular goth influencer, believing she is secretly communicating with him. His obsession escalates into full-blown delusion, culminating in him breaking into her home, expecting a romantic connection. The consequences are violent and shocking, exposing the dangers of parasocial relationships and toxic fandom.

Extinction Event takes place in a world where mass extinctions occur regularly, yet society remains eerily apathetic. As animals vanish and ecosystems collapse, the protagonist becomes obsessed with tracking the disappearances. Slowly, they begin to realize that humans may be next. This haunting tale explores climate horror, mass denial, and existential dread.

In Nightstalkers, a woman living alone begins noticing shadowy figures outside her apartment. At first, she believes they are human stalkers, but their unnatural movements suggest otherwise. Surveillance footage reveals nothing—no presence, no proof. As paranoia consumes her, she realizes too late that she is being hunted by something beyond her understanding. The story taps into themes of urban horror, surveillance, and the unseen.

Shake Well follows a woman who drinks an unfamiliar juice and begins experiencing disturbing changes. Her skin becomes translucent, her body unrecognizable. The more she consumes, the less human she becomes. The final revelation suggests she is transforming into something beyond human comprehension. A chilling commentary on consumerism, food safety, and corporate negligence, this story is both surreal and horrifying.

In The King, an arrogant, misogynistic man who believes himself superior to others finds himself trapped in his own home. As the women he has wronged watch from the shadows, his body begins to twist and deform. He is being consumed by an inescapable force—one that mirrors the toxicity he has unleashed on the world. A grotesque examination of power, privilege, and consequences, this story delivers a brutal reckoning.

Company Man presents a disturbing vision of corporate horror. An employee is promoted to an elite inner circle, only to discover that his new role comes with disturbing transformations. His colleagues seem less than human, his body begins to change, and bizarre rituals replace normal workplace duties. As he loses his sense of self, he realizes he may have never had free will to begin with. A dark satire of capitalism, this story examines the dehumanization of corporate culture and blind loyalty to the system.

Clark’s She’s Always Hungry is a terrifying and thought-provoking exploration of hunger—whether for power, perfection, validation, or survival. Through grotesque and surreal storytelling, she dissects the darkest corners of human nature, delivering horror with a razor-sharp edge.

Themes

Bodily Horror, Obsession, and the Destruction of Identity

One of the most unsettling recurring themes in She’s Always Hungry is the idea that the body is not a stable, inviolable entity but something malleable, parasitic, and ultimately consumed by external or internal forces. The collection repeatedly portrays the human body as a site of transformation, invasion, and decay.

In Build a Body Like Mine, the protagonist willingly harbors parasites as a grotesque form of self-improvement, highlighting the disturbing extent to which societal expectations of beauty and thinness warp personal agency. This extends to Hollow Bones, where an influencer’s desire for an impossibly fragile aesthetic leads to a literal dissolution of her physical being.

In Shake Well, corporate negligence and consumer trust result in a woman’s horrifying bodily transformation, raising questions about the extent to which we surrender our physical selves to unseen forces—be they capitalism, digital culture, or even supernatural. Each of these stories presents the human body not as a personal possession but as a battleground, where external pressures gradually erode personal identity until nothing remains but an altered, grotesque husk.

Paranoia, Uncanny Spaces, and the Collapse of the Familiar

The world of Clark’s stories is one where reality is no longer stable, where the familiar can warp at any moment into something horrifyingly unrecognizable. Everyday life is full of unsettling distortions, where logic dissolves, and paranoia becomes a natural response.

In Nightstalkers, the protagonist initially believes she is being followed by human stalkers, only to slowly realize that her pursuers may not be human at all—if they even exist in the way she perceives them. The Shadow Over Little Chitaly takes an almost absurdist approach to this theme, presenting a restaurant that both does and does not exist, a phenomenon so uncanny it disrupts the logic of space, time, and consumer experience.

Similarly, in Company Man, the protagonist’s corporate environment becomes an inescapable labyrinth, where professional ambition mutates into something ritualistic, sinister, and inhuman. These stories tap into the deep existential fear that what we take for granted—our jobs, our food, our own senses—may be unreliable. Once the illusion cracks, there may be no way to return to normalcy.

Consumption, Desire, and the Loss of Autonomy

The title She’s Always Hungry is more than just a reference to literal appetite. It speaks to an insatiable force, an endless craving that manifests across different stories as addiction, physical consumption, and even cosmic predation.

In She’s Always Hungry, hunger becomes something otherworldly and malevolent, as an oceanic creature compels men to disappear into the sea, consumed not only physically but also mentally. Their free will erodes under the creature’s lure. Extinction Event takes a more abstract approach to hunger, depicting a world where entire species vanish overnight while humanity remains eerily indifferent. It is as if some vast and invisible hunger is swallowing the natural world piece by piece.

Meanwhile, in The King, the protagonist’s unchecked entitlement is framed as its own form of hunger—a devouring narcissism that leads to his grotesque and irreversible transformation. Across these narratives, Clark presents hunger as an all-consuming force, something that is not simply biological but existential. It is a metaphor for capitalism, power, addiction, and the terrifying inability to ever be fully satiated.

Online Obsession, Parasocial Relationships, and the Loss of Boundaries

In multiple stories, Clark examines the uniquely modern horror of living in a world where digital spaces collapse the boundaries between the public and the private, the real and the fictional. The internet is not merely a tool for connection; it is a breeding ground for distortion, obsession, and parasitic relationships.

Goth GF is perhaps the clearest manifestation of this theme, where an influencer’s existence becomes a projection screen for a fan’s escalating delusions. This ultimately culminates in violence when he attempts to impose his fantasy onto her real life. Hollow Bones similarly critiques the way social media contorts identity, depicting an influencer whose sense of self becomes so warped by online expectations that she literally dissolves under the weight of her own performative existence.

Even in The Problem Solver, though not explicitly digital, the protagonist’s experience is reframed through virality. Oscar’s violent revenge is turned into a social spectacle, completely removing Juliet’s control over her own narrative. These stories suggest that digital culture is not just about connection. It is also about the way the online world reshapes human relationships into something parasitic, inescapable, and deeply predatory.

Gender, Vengeance, and the Collapse of Moral Authority

Clark’s collection is acutely aware of the ways in which power—particularly gendered power—shapes interactions, distorts justice, and, in many cases, turns morality into something monstrous. Her stories explore the illusion of control and the devastating consequences of unchecked power.

In The Problem Solver, Oscar’s violent retribution under the guise of allyship exposes the self-serving nature of performative masculinity. His actions shift the focus away from Juliet’s trauma and onto his own performative rage. The King takes this critique further, offering a portrait of unchecked entitlement and misogyny that manifests as literal bodily horror. The protagonist’s self-aggrandizement renders him monstrous.

Even in She’s Always Hungry, power takes on a strange, gendered form. The village women attempt to maintain control while the men fall under the influence of an external, seductive force. These stories suggest that power is rarely about justice. It is about control, about who gets to define the narrative, and about the inevitable collapse of those who believe themselves invincible.

Climate Horror, Corporate Dystopia, and the Fear of the Inevitable

Perhaps one of the most pervasive undercurrents in Clark’s work is the sense that the world is unraveling. Humanity is either complicit in its own demise or too apathetic to fight against it.

Extinction Event presents a vision of environmental collapse so normalized that people continue their daily lives even as ecosystems vanish overnight. The horror does not come from sudden catastrophe but from society’s eerie detachment. Company Man reframes corporate ambition as something akin to an eldritch horror, where employees become something not quite human. Their individuality is consumed by a force greater than themselves.

Shake Well critiques the blind trust placed in consumer products, as something as innocuous as juice becomes a vehicle for an unthinkable bodily transformation. In these stories, there is no grand apocalyptic event, no singular villain—only a slow, creeping entropy. Clark’s horror does not rely on jump scares or sudden destruction. It is the horror of inevitability, of a world where the worst has already begun, and yet life continues as if nothing has changed.