HONEY

In this debut novel, a young woman pursuing her Ph.D. at Cambridge University acts on her strong—very strong—feelings about poorly behaving men.

Yrsa—a Black Briton of Caribbean heritage—is working on her graduate degree in sociology. A source of irritation is Richardson, a married professor; he has just ended his affair with Yrsa’s friend, who is devastated. After Yrsa flicks a bee into Richardson’s lemonade without anyone noticing, he has a fatal allergic reaction, and she marvels at how easy it was to get away with murder. Yrsa decides to give Hugh, an old fling, another chance, but when he admits that he and his mates had “this point-scoring thing” with women and that Yrsa was “Black-girl magic, twenty points,” she realizes that he, too, has to go. Per the Daily Mail: “Student Found Dead Beneath One of Cambridge’s Oldest Buildings.” As Yrsa’s victims pile up, Thompson has fun skewering the impulse to intellectualize immoral behavior; as Yrsa sees it, “Hugh rendered her into an object; a commodity with per­ceived value; powerless. And she rendered him, dead. It’s theory in action. A new methodology.” Thompson hints at a psychological explanation for (but not a defense of) Yrsa’s murderous ways, and despite themselves, readers will acknowledge the character’s good qualities: She can be amusingly withering (“It’s hard to hear him over his ego”) and even civic-minded (she volunteers to spend time with an elderly neighbor). The novel’s ending splutters, perhaps overburdened by all that Thompson has ambitiously and impressively bitten off: a twisted comeuppance story, a campus-life spoof, and a look at the dating-app generation of women negotiating how their desire to be desired might sit with the feminism they treasure.

Wow. Think Fleabag channeled by Valerie Solanas.