Emily Schultz explores fair-haired plague in new novel ‘The Blondes’

TORONTO – Emily Schultz had long toyed with the notion of writing a story about fair-haired women, but it was a random advertisement in a magazine that finally spurred her to tackle her new novel, “The Blondes.”

“I was on a flight to New York … and I was reading a Vanity Fair and I noticed that all the ads seemed to feature blond women and I opened up to this Gucci spread in particular and it was a gang of blond women,” recalled Schultz, who divides her time between New York and Wallaceburg, Ont., where she grew up.

“They looked so vampiric, as if they were ready to murder somebody. They had the eyeliner that almost made their eyes look sunken in and I just all of a sudden said ‘The Blondes!’ and as soon as I said that, even though I was still joking around … I just knew that I had to write the book and I started to take the idea seriously.”

“The Blondes” (Doubleday) is told from the perspective of Hazel Hayes, a grad student who finds herself pregnant by a married professor and alone in New York City during a bizarre outbreak that turns blonds into maniacal killers.

A departure from her two previous novels, Schultz describes “The Blondes” as “fantastical fiction.” Finding the right tone, she says, took a bit of work.

“I wanted it to be a fun read, and I wanted there to be some humour, but I also knew that I was getting at some serious issues,” says the 38-year-old author, whose last novel, “Heaven Is Small,” was nominated for a Trillium Book Award alongside titles by Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.

“Striking that balance was really hard. We were even editing it almost up until the last minute, sometimes pulling out lines that we thought were too funny.”

Shortly after her 2009 epiphany on the airplane, Schultz — who has a 10-month-old son — wrote the first draft of “The Blondes.”

The reader gradually learns more about Hazel as she navigates her way back to Ontario during the blond plague, including her relationship with her mother and the tense bond she shares with the wife of her professor.

“I knew that I wanted to explore relationships between women, and also the many levels of what it means to be a woman in general,” said Schultz, co-founder of the literary journal “Joyland.”

“(The book) starts with Hazel (having) a rant about women and it’s not a very positive rant. But I wanted it to start that way because I felt that she needs to work through her issues … and all the things that surface from this strange blond plague.”

With echoes of “Contagion” and “Blindness,” “The Blondes” is garnering strong reviews and being called a “breakout” for Schultz.

As she discusses the book, the author herself makes an interesting cinematic reference — to the filmmaking Coen brothers. She’s heard that the Oscar winners don’t always know where a movie script will go, something that was also true for “The Blondes.”

“The book surprised me,” said the dark-haired writer, who experimented with blondness “for four months in 2005.”

“And it surprised me that it went to some chilling places.”