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Book Reviewed by: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.
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 echoes of Blindness and The Handmaid's Tale amplified by a 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.
ONE
WOMEN HAVE STUPID DREAMS. We laud each other only to tear each other down. We are not like men; men shake hands with hate between them all the time and have public arguments that are an obvious jostling for power and position. They compete for dominance-if not over money, then over mating. They know this, each and every one. But women are civilized animals. We have something to prove, too, but we'll swirl our anger with straws in the bottom of our drinks and suck it up, leaving behind a lipstick stain. We'll comment on your hair or your dress only to land a backhanded compliment, make you feel pathetic and poor, too fat or too thin, too young or too old, unsophisticated, unqualified, unwanted. For women, power comes by subtle degrees. I could write a thesis on such women-and I nearly did.
Don't get me wrong. I am one of them too. I've had stupid dreams, and you yourself are the result.
You: strange seven pounds of other.
Here you are, under my hand, swimming in blood, about the size of...
Much of the enjoyment of this novel is derived from the way author Emily Schultz charts the reaction of the world to a virus that, to many, only becomes ‘real’ when a celebrity falls victim to it. She is playful with the media’s attempts to understand and name the illness...continued
Full Review
(624 words)
(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
Ben Lorry, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
Sharp and fluid and legitamately disturbing. A thinking person's nailbiter. Helene Wecker, author of The Golem and the Jinni
Like the literary love child of Naomi Wolf and Stephen King...the result is a spellbinding brew, both satirical and deeply satisfying. Peter Orner, author of Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo
An energetic, startling novel. Emily Schultz is a writer with a deadly sense of humor. Stephen King
Emily Schultz is my new hero.
Pandemics – global outbreaks of disease across countries and continents – have been a feature of human history for centuries: as inexplicable and frightening as the contagion in Emily Shultz's novel The Blondes, where women with blonde hair are turned into crazed maniacs. While The Blondes is clearly satirical and we shouldn't expect an exclusively blonde virus to attack us anytime soon, the way her world reacts to the virus rings true to the reactions we have seen to recent viruses such as Ebola and Swine Flu. Here, for your edification, is a whistle-stop tour through some of the world's worst pandemics:
The Bubonic Plague
In the 14th century, it is estimated that the Bubonic Plague killed approximately 75 million people. ...
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Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
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