The Blondes

A breakout novel for a young writer whose last book was shortlisted for the Trillium Prize alongside Anne Michaels and Margaret Atwood, and whom the Toronto Star called a "force of nature." 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. 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 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. A hilarious and whipsmart novel where an epidemic of a rabies-like disease is carried only by blonde women, who all must go to great lengths to conceal their blondness. Hazel Hayes is a grad student living in New York City. She learns she is pregnant (from an affair with her married professor) at an apocalyptically bad time: random but deadly attacks on passers-by by blonde women Hazel Hayes is a graduate student living in New York City when she learns that she is pregnant after an ill-advised affair with her married professor. More worrisome than the shock of this discovery is the apocalyptically bad timing: random but deadly attacks, all by women with light hair, are terrifying the city's inhabitants