In the Margins Kickoff!

The first book of the semester is Honey by Imani Thompson!

Yrsa is bored: bored with her PhD program, her entitled students, and the never-ending pages of racial violence and feminist theory she has to read. But most of all, she’s bored with the men in her life—especially the bad ones. And then, one sunny afternoon, she accidentally kills one. Suddenly a problematic professor is dead, and Yrsa, well—she’s no longer bored. Emboldened, she starts to chase the high, and soon no misbehaving sexist man within commuting distance is safe. Finally Yrsa’s academic research feels useful. But how long can killing in the name of feminist and racial solidarity justify her actions? And how long until her actions—and buried family secrets—come back to unravel her?

A dark, provocative, adrenaline-rush of a novel about a graduate student who murders bad men and justifies it in the name of feminism, by a bold new voice in fiction
“Might be the most-anticipated debut novel of the year thanks in part to its perfect-for-Hollywood premise.”—Esquire
“A darkly comic novel about the tricky politics of race, sex, violence and love . . . the entertaining (and quietly damning) read you’ll need to kick off spring.”—Elle

More about Imani Thompson:

Imani Thompson is a British writer of Jamaican heritage. She has been published in The Mays and British Vogue. After studying Sociology at Cambridge University she wrote Honey while working as a bookseller at Daunt Books. She is working on her second novel.

More about Honey:

Yrsa is a young Black undergraduate supervisor who is studying for a sociology PhD at Cambridge. She is tired of the disappointing men in her orbit: the ones she works with, sleeps with and who abuse her trust and that of her friends. She is also heartily sick of the students who attend her lectures and “the mix of boredom, doubt, arrogance that stares back at her. The blond flops of hair, Macs covered in stickers, non-discreet texters when she’s explaining – like not all lecturers here will – how the world works.”

Near the start of Honey, we find Yrsa counselling a devastated colleague, Nina, who has been sleeping with her married professor, Richardson. Not only has he reneged on his pledge to leave his wife, but he has been using Nina’s research and passing it off as his own.

Later, when Yrsa runs into Richardson and observes a bee crawling on the edge of his can of lemonade, she furtively flicks it into the drink. The resulting sting causes a fatal allergic reaction. As he lies on the ground dying, Yrsa declines to help and instead gets a taste for deadly retribution.

With shades of Promising Young Woman and My Sister, the Serial Killer, Imani Thompson’s debut is a darkly entertaining campus thriller that is cleverly threaded with feminist and race theory. Honey boldly examines what happens when a woman on the edge loses her moral compass and takes drastic action. “To K*ll and get away with it,” Yrsa reflects. “There’s something spectacular to it.”

-Fiona Sturgess, The Guardian