Books with a Twist: She's Always Hungry by Eliza Clark

Having a martini with Eliza Clark at Rasputin's, Mare Street

Rasputin’s is a tiny Mare Street bar that glows a haemoglobic red. On a Tuesday night, the music is all 90s chill out vibes – plenty of Radiohead, Portishead and Air. The Evening Standard compared Rasputin’s to ‘spaces in Berlin where people wearing leather ask you if you’d like to have an orgy’ which feels about right – it has a cool, thrown-together feel, with an equally cool, minimalist cocktail menu.

I’m here to rate the martinis, shotgun a £4 veggie hotdog and chat about books. My drinking partner for the evening is Eliza Clark, author of novels Boy Parts and Penance, and the short story collection She’s Always Hungry.

From a teenager testing experimental acne medication to an ‘irony-poisoned, edge-lord piece of shit’ cannibalistic goddess, She’s Always Hungry is populated with an unlikely cast of characters. The stories are fresh and transgressive, peppered with Eliza Clark’s signature blend of humour and horror, and veering between verisimilitude and surrealism. At their heart, each story examines a form of hunger – a need for human connection, physical perfection, control, subjugation, or a desire to be consumed. It’s an absolutely cracking collection, and one of my favourite reads of 2024.

On that note, we need to get a round in. The martinis at Rasputin’s are served fast and wet: mixed with vodka and plenty of vermouth, they’re poured straight from the freezer into frosted coupes. Each is garnished with an almost manic rack of five (five!) pimento-stuffed olives for a mere seven quid. We both opt for dirty martinis.

My first burning question: how does Eliza find the martini?

I like it. I think most people would like this dirty martini. It isn’t too rancid and salty. I could do with more rancid and salty, actually. I could do with more brine – for me, there’s maybe a little bit too much vermouth. I don’t like a martini when it edges into being too sweet. Ideally, I want a dirty martini to be savoury.

I want to dig a little deeper: I’m curious to know Eliza’s martini gold standard?

I would go dirty vodka martini, and then – on a scale of one to ten for how dirty, I ask for a nine or ten. Cos I want it gross. And I usually say I want it to be gross. One of my pet peeves is when they use Perelló olives for a dirty martini.

Stop. I love a Perelló olive!

There’s loving a Perelló olive – but do you want to drink the brine?

YES.

In a martini?

YES.

But it has too much of its own unique flavour. It tastes too much like Perelló olives, like I’m supping directly from a can of Perelló olives, which I don’t mind, I just think it’s overcomplicating the flavour profile. I’d rather just have normal olive brine in it.

Like a kraken stirring from the depths of the ocean, Julia Armfield is moved to make her presence known:

I think this is unnecessary moralising. I guess, fuck Perelló.

Eliza rethinks her Perelló stance.

I think it’s partly that I don’t like Perelló olives either. Fuck Perelló.

High on sodium, after hoofing through three martinis, fifteen olives and a veggie hotdog, I’d like to know which of Eliza’s characters she would most like to meet for a martini.

The alien linguist from the story Hollow Bones. Yeah – that little guy. I think they would be great to have a drink with. You could be like, This is human alcohol, and they’d be like, This tastes awful and I’m having an allergic reaction to it. It would be nice.

And the worst?

Probably the teenage girl from Shake Well, because she’d just be like Omg I’m soooo drunk, and you’d be like, You’ve had one sip. I just think that would be really difficult to manage. I think there are a lot of horrible people in the book who would probably be fine for one drink though.

Now that we’re feeling a little loose, I go for the jugular: what’s shaken Eliza the most about publishing?

Oh my God. Probably the brass neck of newspaper reviewers. Some of the most rude and insane stuff about me has been published in nationally circulated newspapers.

And finally, before the £7 martinis take the wheel, I ask what’s the most frank advice Eliza would give a debut writer after a few too many martinis?

Expect nothing. Expect no positivity, expect no negativity. Expect nothing. [laughs] It’s a cruel industry, where you’re either going to be ‘picked’ or you’re not going to be ‘picked’. Sometimes, you’re not going to be ‘picked’ and you will get some kind of viral success later, through word of mouth, and there’s nothing you can do to force that. You can be selective about the people you’re making friends with. Support other writers, but you don’t necessarily need to give everybody everything. You don’t need to give yourself over to public life, and to other people in publishing. You don’t have to comment on everything. You can just keep contained and take a step back. But also, expect nothing.

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