The Corpse in the Room: Hunger and Thirst's Bleak Portrait of Britain Claire Fuller's latest novel, Hunger and Thirst, is a scathing critique of Britain's social ills, wrapped in a gothic horror narrative that explores the decay of human relationships as much as the physical rot at its heart.
The book follows Ursula, a young woman shaped by her encounters with two cadavers: her mother, who died under tragic circumstances when Ursula was just seven, and Sue, her friend from the halfway house where she's sent after being bounced between foster care.
Fuller's fascination with corpses speaks to a broader concern about how we treat the dead and what that says about our treatment of each other.