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Summary
Summary
The Blondes is a hilarious and whipsmart novel where an epidemic of a rabies-like disease is carried only by blonde women, all of whom must go to great lengths to conceal their blondness.
Hazel Hayes is a grad student living in New York City. As the novel opens, she learns she is pregnant (from an affair with her married professor) at an apocalyptically bad time: random but deadly attacks on passers-by, all by blonde women, are terrorizing New Yorkers. Soon it becomes clear that the attacks are symptoms of a strange illness that is transforming blondes--whether CEOs, flight attendants, students or accountants--into rabid killers.
Emily Schultz's beautifully realized novel is a mix of satire, thriller, and serious literary work. With biting satiric wit, The Blondes is at once an examination of the complex relationships between women, and a merciless but giddily enjoyable portrait of what happens in a world where beauty is--literally--deadly.
Author Notes
EMILY SCHULTZ is the co-founder of the literary journal Joyland. Her previous novel, Heaven Is Small, was named a finalist for the Trillium Book Award alongside books by Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro, as was The Blondes . She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Brian Joseph Davis. The inspiration for The Blondes was a Gucci ad featuring murderous looking blonde women in a Vanity Fair magazine. Emily's story about her masquerading as a blonde was featured in Elle Magazine. A blog post from Emily entitled "How I Spent the Stephen King Money" recently went viral.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A pandemic of a rabies-like virus is turning blonde women, both natural and bottled, into maniacal killers in this satirical novel from Schultz (Heaven Is Small). In New York City, an eager grad student from Toronto named Hazel Hayes becomes pregnant after a fling with her middle-aged married professor, Karl Mann. Now stuck in a remote Canadian cabin with Grace, Karl's drunken, possibly deranged mind-game-playing wife, Hazel relates the fragmented stages of her "ugly affair" to the unborn child she initially wanted to terminate. Schultz spares no raunchy, noisome detail about the blonde rampages, the government's ineptitude in handling the crisis, or Hazel's maternal angst in this protracted meditation on women who think they're the only ones who can save someone else's husband. Not every reader will buy the solution-that women only matter when they're dangerous. Like dry, brittle, over-peroxided hair, Hazel's story might look attractive at a casual glance, but up close, those nasty dark roots destroy all the comfortable illusions. Agent: Shaun Bradley, Transatlantic Agency. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A Canadian grad student, newly pregnant with her married professor's baby, must navigate a world altered by a pandemic in which blonde women attack the people around them in this smart new literary thriller from Schultz (Heaven Is Small, 2009, etc.). On her first day in New York City, Hazel Hayes discovers her unexpected pregnancy, dyes her hair orange and sees a businesswoman drag a young girl to her death on the subway tracks. At first, it seems like a random act of violence, but soon, the streets are filled with women and girls acting rabid, killing people and perishing themselves. The only thing connecting the infected? Their (natural, dyed, highlighted) blonde hair. Hazel is recounting these eventsand her herculean struggle to get home to Toronto as the disease tears across the worldmonths later to her unborn child while holed up in a cabin with her professor's wife. The premise seems ludicrousalmost as if it's not meant to be taken very seriouslybut that's intentional, and Schultz plays with this expectation. Before a violent attack at JFK, Hazel witnesses a group of flight attendants preparing to strike. She attempts to describe the scene and then stops. "You see, I'm not telling this right," she says. "It sounds comical, even to me. Part of the difficulty has to do with the fact that they were very beautiful women." This is the best kind of satire: The disease doesn't stand in cleanly for any single idea but rather an amalgamation of double standards, dismissals, expectations, abuses, and injustices large and small that any woman will recognize. What could be sexist clichsthe student/professor affair, the mistress and wife at each other's throatsare utterly recast, and nestled in the wry political commentary are moments of pure horror. A nail-biter that is equal parts suspense, science fiction, and a funny, dark sendup of the stranglehold of gender. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Hazel Hayes, a struggling Canadian graduate student in New York City working haphazardly on a thesis about what women look like and what we think they look like, discovers that she's pregnant after a brief affair with a married professor back home. Already in shock, she then witnesses a horrifying outbreak of a bizarre deadly virus that transforms blondes, those icons of standardized beauty, into rabid, indiscriminate killers. Alarmed and flat broke, Hazel decides to return to Canada, but she encounters more Blonde Fury and ends up interned in a grim quarantine facility. Schultz sharply addresses a slew of social failings, from gender stereotypes and racial profiling to inane media frenzy, mass hysteria, and the tyranny of a declared state of emergency in this ferociously clever, exceedingly well written variation on the pandemic novel, which is now so prevalent that it's time, given the advent of climate fiction, or cli-fi, to coin vi-fi for virus fiction. The pandemic and its ripple effects make for a gripping, darkly bemusing read. But there's more. This canny, suspenseful, acidly observant satire cradles an intimate, poignant, and hilarious story of one lonely, stoic, young mother-to-be caught up in surreal and terrifying situations. Schultz gives readers a lot to think about in this rampaging yet sensitive tale about the true depths of womanhood.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Toronto native Hazel Hayes is in New York researching her graduate thesis when the world starts to unravel. After discovering her unplanned pregnancy with her married thesis advisor, Hazel witnesses a deranged, blonde businesswoman push a teenager in front of a subway train. Within days seemingly random acts of violence by blonde women become a pandemic, the result of a rabies-like virus that leads to rage and mindless murder. As she tries to cross the border back to her native Canada, natural redhead Hazel witnesses several attacks, loses contact with her family and friends, and is quarantined in a women's detention center. The Blonde Fury rages on as Hazel's pregnancy advances, and she finds herself hiding in an isolated cabin with her lover's wife. Verdict The tight focus on Hazel's pregnancy, which offers a neat time line for events, and her guilt over her brief relationship with her professor underscore the horrors of a rapidly unraveling civilization. Funny, horrific, and frighteningly realistic, Schultz's (Heaven Is Small) second novel is a must read. [See Prepub Alert, 10/20/14.]-Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
