The Stepford Wives

I was expecting to be really frightened by this book. After talking with my mother about her reactions to the book and the original movie (I believe it came out in the 50s or 60s), I was expecting this book to send chills down my spine and really freak me out. Either I have been desensitized by all of the crime/violence on TV or I just don't get freaked out easily. I thought this book was well written and the premise behind it was fascinating: a group of men move their families to a community where all of the women go through mysterious transformations from independent, career-minded women to sex-kitten housewives with the sole goal of serving their husbands. Okay, how do the wives get that way? Well, although I knew how they got that way, I didn't really feel that the book did a very good job of telling the reader. I've seen the remake with Nicole Kidman, Glen Close and Matthew Broderick and I knew that the goal of the director was not to remake the suspense filled original movie, but to give it a humorous edge. It did just that. The original film, IMHO, was more suspenseful than the book, but still not quite enough to send chills down my spine. This book is a quick read and easy to get through.

My advice: in all honesty, don't bother reading it, just watch the remake. It has some good laughs and is a much more enjoyable experience than reading the book.

A short horror. It explores feminist and anti-feminist themes with a subtle rye humour. Don't mistake this for an anti-feminist story. Very cleverly written, can be read in a single sitting, but gives hours worth of contemplation.

The patriarchy always wins

What a fast paced creepy story! He made every sentence count! 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ !

I have read this book before. I am a fan of it so when I had the chance to listen to the ALC... I jumped right on it.

The narrator is BRILLIANT and bought a new depth to the stepford wives. I loved how real the characters all felt and my only real issue with the book is the ending... I needed to know more!

It's definitely worth the read if you have never read it before but I highly recommend the audio!!

Very easy but disappointing read.

Reminds me of ‘Comfort Me with Apples', which I absolutely hated.

2.5 only for being easy to go through

A chilling and unsettling read. This is my second Ira Levin novel and I enjoyed this as much as Rosemary's Baby. A quick read but extremely thought provoking. Highly recommended.

This book has one of the most iconic reveals ever, and I went in knowing how it would end. However, that didn't change the fact that I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the ending would change. Due to knowing the ending, I was also able to pick up on smaller details and foreshadowing, which is always fun.

Reread as an adult and even better than I remembered! Really enjoyed this

3.5⭐️

Ira Levin is a renowned author of horror and thrillers. Despite his acclaim, I had up to this point managed to avoid reading both Rosemary's Baby and this work. I'm grateful that The Howl Society book club selected this novella and inspired me to finally check it off my comically long TBR. Although I had never read any of Levin's books or seen their film adaptations, I was, however, familiar with Levin from my experience directing a community theatre production of his play Deathtrap. Based on Deathtrap, a thriller about writers, marketable ideas, love, a psychic, and more, I expected The Stepford Wives be thrilling, twisty, and perhaps even violent. In a way, it was. Without giving away too much of the plot, let it suffice to say that a family moves to the suburban town of Stepford, and the novel's protagonist Joanna begins to suspect that something odd is happening that transforms all the women into their husband's idea of an ideal house wife. Beautiful and devoted to housework. Throughout the book clues are dropped, some red herrings too, and dread begins to build toward the book's conclusion. While I felt it took a little bit to get started, once it got going it was a thrilling ride. Though this book isn't characterized by the overt violence of Deathtrap, the reader witnesses other types of violence including gaslighting, oppressive gender roles, and perhaps even something more sinister still. As much fun as it was to try to figure out what was going on in Stepford, I found the book's conclusion to not be totally satisfying. There was too much ambiguity in the book for my taste. Still, a great book that still feels frighteningly relevant today, despite having been written in the 1970s. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This review can also be found on my blog.

An odd medicinal smell soured the air – coming on the breeze at her back. It almost reminded her of something in her childhood, but fell short.

→ What I Liked:

The Characters
This is a rare instance in which the female characters seem to be more developed than the male characters, and I loved it. They had so much individuality (aside from the Stepford wives of course), whereas the men were defined more by their jobs than anything else. One of the women was even implied to be asexual!

The Writing
While simplistic in style, the way the story was written was just fantastic. It started off relatively innocuous (even knowing what the ending would be), but built to an incredible climax full of anxiety. He pulls off a similar climb in Rosemary's Baby, which I also really enjoyed.

→ What I Didn't Like:

The Foreword
To be fair, this was added later to the book and was not written by Ira Levin. The fact remains, however, that Peter Straub's introduction was painfully condescending. He went on and on about how the average reader wouldn't be able to properly appreciate Levin's writing and how subtle and literary it is. I can appreciate him wanting to explain the nuances of this simplistic writing style, but the way he did it just really rubbed me the wrong way.

The Ending
While I understand to a certain extent why the ending felt so abrupt, I wish it hadn't. I felt pretty unsatisfied by it, even though I “get” it. Maybe Peter Straub was right and I just can't properly appreciate it. ;)

→ TL;DR:
~Well-developed female characters
~Great pacing
~Pretentious foreword (not written by the author)
~Abrupt ending

There is something wrong with the women in Stepford, Bobbie & Joanna don't know the cause, but can they escape before they change too?

This book made my skin crawl.

I was skeptical when I started it because it is quite a short book, but this author knows how to pack the book with everything it needs to tell the story correctly and grip the reader. Since I already had an idea of the town's secret (it can't be called spoiling if the book is over 30 years old) I was not too shocked by all the turns of events, even more so when I read the forward of the book, but there were still many things to made my jaw drop. I will confess to wandering around my home in thought for over 10 minutes, just thinking about what I had read.

Even though the book is over 40 years old, I feel the content is still relevant to the problems of today. While reading the book, I did not know how old the book was (although Women's Liberation Movement should have clued me in), but it still felt modern and probable in our day, especially since there are female robots in Japan.

My one criticism for the book is the formatting of it, and I'm not even sure if it is just an e-book thing or if it is the same in the physical copies. I would have liked a more substantial break between scene or day changes because one paragraph takes place during at night and the next might paragraph might be Joanna talking to Bobbie at a cafe! It could be jarring at times. I'm not asking for more chapters, but an extra space or a line between paragraphs taking place in different scenes would be helpful.