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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.
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
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(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
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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