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The Starving Bride
  • Published: 6 October 2026
  • ISBN: 9781761623073
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $38.00

The Starving Bride




The Starving Bride considers our insatiable appetite for the emaciated female form, and the dangers of ignoring the warning signs of catastrophe.

England, the near future.

Dumped by her boyfriend, fired from her job and estranged from her parents, Hazel Whitlock signs up for a sideshow act in Blackpool. The seaside resort has revived all the cancelled old favourites: the Wonder Midgets, Britain’s Fattest Boy, the South Sea Cannibals…and the Starving Bride.

On display in the iconic Blackpool Tower, with a ravenous lion prowling the enclosure, Hazel must lie in silence while spectators view her and pass judgement on her body. Time compresses and warps in this strange space, and the past returns to Hazel with full and shocking force.

As the days tick down and the Showman entices ever larger crowds through the door, Hazel’s old friend Gilda becomes increasingly worried for her welfare. Councillor Frank Marsh, meanwhile, investigating the stability of the Tower, is alarmed at his findings – but his concerns fall on deaf ears.

  • Published: 6 October 2026
  • ISBN: 9781761623073
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $38.00

About the author

Catherine Chidgey

Catherine Chidgey is a multiple award-winner whose novels have achieved international acclaim. The Axeman’s Carnival was a number one bestseller in her native New Zealand, as was her previous novel Pet. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her debut, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South-East Asia and South Pacific region). It also won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. The Axeman’s Carnival and The Wish Child both won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction – New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award. Other honours include the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Nielsen Independent New Zealand Bestseller award. Catherine Chidgey lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.

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