THE BLONDES

Reminiscent of Saramago's Blindness and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, THE BLONDES is the breakout novel for a young writer whose last book was shortlisted for the Trillium Prize alongside Anne Michaels, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood.

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, skateboarders or accountants--into rabid killers. As the epidemic spreads, it locks down the city in fear, then inspires ironic detachment: hip magazines throw Blonde Balls and Peroxide Parties as fundraisers; "blonde backing" becomes the ultimate edgy sexual adventure; brunettes begin anchoring the news. Hazel, vulnerable because of her pregnancy, decides to flee the city--but finds that the epidemic has spread and that the world outside New York is even stranger than she imagined. She sets out on a trip across a paralyzed America to find the one woman--perhaps blonde, perhaps not--who might be able to help her. Emily Schultz's beautifully realized novel is 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.