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Art & Books Books

The Blondes

THE BLONDES by Emily Schultz (Doubleday), 391 pages, $29.95 cloth. Rating: NNNN


I like a writer with style – the literary, not the fashion, kind. Emily Schultz has it big time. It’s not only that her characters aren’t exactly the kind you’d want as friends. It’s that she has a particular vision, fuelled by implausible premises that never prevent you from going along for the ride.

She follows up Heaven Is Small, about a man who works at a romance novel publishing house in his afterlife, with The Blondes, about a pregnant woman trying to survive in a world where blond women have been struck by a disease that turns them into crazed killers.

The novel is part metaphor for racism, part commentary on epidemic-related paranoia and part sly look at manufactured beauty. But within these lofty themes are fascinating characters in intriguing relationships.

When Hazel, in New York City to consult on her PhD, discovers she’s been knocked up by her married professor Karl, she heads home to Toronto. But blonds are attacking everywhere – including the airport – where Hazel’s forced into quarantine.

By the time she gets to T.O., the city is gripped by an all-out hysteria over the mysterious disease.

Hazel – for reasons unclear (but so what, that’s how good Schultz is) – heads up to Karl’s cottage, where she finds his terrified wife, Grace, holed up and becomes trapped.

Schultz nails the darkly comic tone and maintains her edge in a narrative that depicts desperate people who tend to be cruel, not warm and toasty, in the face of fear. That doesn’t mean people don’t connect – Schultz does have some small hope for humanity.

The device of telling the story to her unborn child is iffy, and the ending will divide readers, but The Blondes could be Schultz’s breakout book.

Schultz launches The Blondes at Ben McNally Books on Tuesday (August 21). See listing.

Write Books at susanc@nowtoronto.com

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