BookBrowse Reviews The Blondes by Emily Schultz

BookBrowse:

A satirical thriller, The Blondes is an examination of what happens in a world where beauty is — literally — deadly.

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Hazel Hayes is in a difficult position. She is heavily pregnant and has been abandoned by the wife of her former lover in their cottage in the woods. All she can see from her windows are trees and the occasional glimpse of some neighbors who are outside their property burning hair. Hair? Yes, hair. So opens The Blondes, a tantalizing and original novel about a pandemic virus that infects blonde women and turns them into crazed killers.

From the relative safety of the cottage in the woods, Hazel looks back on her journey to this point, telling her soon-to-be-born baby everything that has happened to her. She begins with the day she discovers she is pregnant and also witnesses the first incident of "blonde fury." We learn that Hazel is a post-grad student from Canada, living out of a hotel in New York while she works on her thesis, and becomes pregnant during a brief affair with her college professor. Before the virus, she was busy writing a PhD thesis on the subject of "aesthetology" which she describes as "the study of looking." She read essays with titles including "Barbie's secret plan for World Domination," and studied, amongst other things, how the beauty industry has "come up with a comforting phrase for "includes placenta." It's a satirical starting point, and poignantly so, because the Siphonaptera Human Virus (SHV or "blonde rabies" or "blonde fury") is an unfolding world crisis.

The impact of the virus is revealed gradually. Hazel watches as a smartly dressed older woman with blonde hair attacks a schoolgirl on a subway platform in a scene worthy of a horror novel. At first, the outbreak seems to be a sideshow to Hazel's personal concerns about being pregnant, but as the disease takes hold she is caught up in the mayhem at airports and the U.S.-Canadian border where a hastily established Women's Entry and Evaluation center quarantines women for weeks. Some contract the virus and die; others remain clear and are eventually released.

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. For example, within a week, National Geographic produces a fold-out color map charting attacks and outbreaks. The beauty industry also responds quickly with products like "Blonde-away" or "Blonde-off." And there are different responses from people too. Most women rush to dye their hair the darkest color possible or shave it off altogether, but others rebel, wearing bright T-shirts with slogans like "Blondes still have more fun." There is even a new sexual activity termed "blonde-backing", where men pay huge sums of money to have sex with blonde women. Although the nature of the virus might stretch credulity, even for satire, at points – it affects all blonde-haired women, natural and dyed blonde, for some unexplained reason – the way Schultz's world reacts to the pandemic hits the spot, chapter after chapter.

It is presumably a deliberate choice on Schultz's part to make her protagonist rather ordinary. Hazel describes herself as dumpy and plain at several points. She is also notably lukewarm about the prospect of motherhood and very unromantic in her appraisal of her relationship with the missing professor. Being pregnant at a time when the world is spinning out of control makes her a necessarily passive character and, as a result, readers looking for a character driven novel may be somewhat disappointed.

For wit and satire, however, as well as an excellently crafted teasing out of Hazel's story before and during the pregnancy and the pandemic, The Blondes is well worth the read.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in May 2015, and has been updated for the April 2016 edition. Click here to go to this issue.