Following in the long line of southern writers, Carol Quinet is a natural storyteller. The forty brief vignettes in The Brilliance of Blondes read like written accounts of oral tradition--playful tales of mishap melded withcompassion you will find yourself retelling again and again. Although these stories revolve around blondes, they are composed on a human level with the capacity to resonate with anyone. From the first story in the collection,"While on Vacation at Myrtle Beach," to the last, "While Shopping at Crabtree Mall," blonde protagonists--many of them recurring characters like Carol, Ann, and Joan--findthemselves in humorous predicaments such as riding bicycles into telephone poles and ditches or accidentally putting black olives instead of blueberries in the blueberry cobbler. These short narratives will not only make you laugh, they will make you relate, as most all of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves in similar embarrassing situations as the characters in these lively stories.