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Les Blondes (2014)

by Emily Schultz(Favorite Author)

3.29 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

2896941258 (ISBN13: 9782896941254)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Alto

review 1: As a blonde myself I was really interested in how this book was going to work, even now after I have finished reading it I am still ata loss to know if it actually did.The story, for me is beautifully written, however in saying that i found it very choppy, often flitting backwards and forwards, so much that sometimes I was a little confused. If you are looking for a blood and guts 'end of the world' horror romp with desolate roads and gangs of marauding men then this is NOT the book for you.As a character study on a woman who is obviously feeling guilty for her actions before 'the main event happens' its wonderfully touching and starkly beautiful, even with its stop start narrative.I did like this book, I finished it, which did take some doing as I nearly gave up halfway b... moreut it is not a book for someone who wants a no brainer book about an apocalypse.
review 2: I have just finished The Blondes and find myself mostly happy with it, but conflicted in some ways. I can certainly see where parallels would be made to Margaret Atwood, but this is Atwood-esque, not Atwood-level. The issue of the unwanted pregnancy didn't rankle me too much; even the narrator's affair with a married man didn't bother me, though normally it would have (fiction or not). What I was bothered by and why I'm not rating the book higher though I thoroughly enjoyed it, is that the motivations of the characters, or perhaps the author, didn't always seem clear.Main character Hazel has a pretty massive sense of entitlement, IMHO. She feels entitled to sleep with someone else's husband so she does. She feels entitled to allow Grace (the wife of the man she slept with) to take care of her for months and then complains (albeit silently to a fetus) about Grace's behaviour. Those things in and of themselves don't bother me. It's an old trope for the other woman to poke holes in the wife, make her less sympathetic, to make the philandering man into a lost soul or wayward, hopeless wreck who felt something special for the OW. Oh wicked Grace broke Hazel's glasses! Oh poor Karl was so lost and chaotic! These things certainly make Grace seem less and Karl seem more sympathetic to the reader and they highlight the inherent and/or learned competitiveness women have toward each other, but I was confused by the motivation behind these points and the many other examples like them in the book. Were they done deliberately or by accident? Did Hazel not realize she was a bit of a complainey entitled brat, or was she accidentally written that way? Did she not see she was viewing Karl through rose coloured glasses, or was the writer herself viewing him that way? Hazel Hayes seems impossibly naive at times and I honestly can't tell if the author did this by accident or design. Is she an intentionally flawed character carefully wrought with naïveté, or is it an accident of incomplete character development that she seems this way? I think in the hands of a more seasoned writer, if the flawed protagonist theory is true it would have been more obvious, and if it were an accident by the author, it wouldn't have happened at all.There are a fair few things I really liked about the book, though. Canadian readers will appreciate the touches of Canadiana which are amusing throughout. I also found some genuinely humorous moments. The pace does drag a bit at first but more than makes up for it in the second half. Thus us a unique concept and is well worth a read. I would have enjoyed digging a bit deeper into the societal beauty standards and women's relationship to each other and beauty, but that's just me. less

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