Honey

Thompson debuts with the scintillating tale of a disillusioned Cambridge University PhD student who goes on a killing spree. Yrsa is at an impasse (“It must have happened gradually, subtly, her life becoming this tedious”). She struggles to contain her boredom with teaching and her disdain for her privileged students, like the one who claims her lecture on intersectional feminism is too woke. Meanwhile, she’s floundering with her dissertation on Afropessimism and women’s liberation. The plot kicks into gear after she learns her best friend’s research has been stolen by her lover, a married professor named Richardson. Not long afterward, she witnesses Richardson being stung by a bee and neglects to offer help as he goes into anaphylactic shock and dies. Yrsa then begins identifying other “bad” men to kill, such as her former lover and classmate, a white man who fetishizes Black women and admits to joining his friends in devising a ranking scale for the women they’ve slept with (“Black girl magic, 20 points!”). The homicides revive Yrsa’s energy for her dissertation, until she receives an anonymous email reading, “I know what you’ve done.” Thompson adds intriguing layers to the sordid thriller plot, such as accessible descriptions of the complex sociological theories of Saidiya Hartman and Stuart Hall, and the story includes a shocking revelation about the origin of Yrsa’s killer instinct. There’s a staggering level of depth to this pitch-perfect satire. Agent: Nicola Chang, David Higham Assoc. (May)