num_pages: 400
description: 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 isliterallydeadly.
language: English
title: The Blondes
publisher: Thomas Dunne Books