The Blondes

This book is another recommendation and borrow from my step-mother. I had high hopes for this work because the cover displays praise from my favorite, Stephen King. I'm gonna have to find a new favorite author, and around the same time that Harper Lee exposes that Atticus is a racist... terrific.

The Blondes by Emily Schultz

Genre: (science?) fiction, epidemic
Publication Date: August, 2012
Setting: NYC and Toronto, present day

Told from the point of view average/tubby, ginger, overall mediocre NYC graduate student (Hazel) as a sudden and mysterious epidemic of rage occurs throughout the world and only affects blonde women. Hazel had slept with a professor at her university and eventually discovers that she is carrying his child. Meanwhile, random "attacks" are occurring all around her of blonde women going nuts and having bouts of aggression towards others. There is no known cause, cure, or method of transmission, but only women who are blonde (even if they are dyed blonde) are afflicted.

Hazel's graduate studies have been focused on femininity and beauty, and coincidentally, it's the blondes who are losing it. I get that this is a satire with deeper meaning, the beautiful blondes are becoming mad, but I'm not buying it. Maybe it's the Biology major in me who can't take this "epidemic" seriously... but I thought World War Z was more believable and far more engaging than this.

Finished reading: Sunday, July 19, 2015

DD's rating: D
Probably doesn't deserve a "D," but I need to counteract the praise that this book receives - "biting satiric wit," "a nail-biter," "Emily Schultz is my new hero." No. The protagonist is unlovable - she is somewhat overweight, kind of pathetic and friendless, feeble, Canadian, and a ginger!  I was rooting more for the crazed blondes than knocked-up and lonely Hazel.

This was something you might read when you exchanged first drafts in a sophomore creative-writing course.

Next read: Still Alice by Lisa Genova