Ira Levin

a new novel by the author of Rosemary's Baby

The stepford wives

High Fidelity

‘There’s something,’ Bobbie said. ‘In the ground, in the water, in the air– I don’t know. It makes women interested in  housekeeping and nothing else but. Who knows what chemicals can do? Nobel-prize winners don’t even really know yet. Maybe it’s some kind of hormone thing; that would explain the fantastic boobs. You’ve got to have noticed.’

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret—a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

The Stepford wives

It was almost like Desperate Housewives in a feminist horror novel.

Bilge Ince

a classic for a reason!!! a really short read and i wish it was longer but honestly that's part of the appeal!

chloe

iamazoo

this book unrooted some deep-seated fears of mine that feel increasingly more salient as i'm getting older...

hate when society is progressing towards the plot of a dystopian-adjacent novel written 50 years ago 

Eugenia G

Levin’s works are uniquely brilliant. This one- despite its title entering our vernacular- is a critically important work. Descriptive despite its brevity; support for women’s rights, support for human rights; inclusion of sci-fi, combined with psychological tactics (e.g. gaslighting), facilitating a relentless forward momentum… this is one that deserves two consecutive reads: first read, ride the wave, let the pace pull you to the end, where you might float in something dark, warm, and viscous, completely uncertain of its precise composition but always aware it could be feces, while you try to understand your reactions to the read; second read is slower, you drive the pace, and notice so many subtleties in the writing, you slow down more, and think about what you’re reading with greater focus.  You probably still end up treading shit, but… well, you probably have a better-defined idea of why.  And despite that, it seems impossible to finish it and not consider it a masterpiece.  

Theodore Kaplan

Stepford Wives

Maggie Gordon

Originally read: November 17, 2014

The Stepford Wives, despite being written in 1972, chills me to my bones. At the start, Walter and Joanna move from the city to the suburbs with their two kids. Joanna is a housewife, though she attempts to have interests outside of her house as well. She's active in the women's liberation movement, and so is her husband. They are the image of a progressive, white, middle class family of their time. Their lives seemed almost perfect until they moved and were exposed to the exacting standards of the Stepford Wives. None of the wives have time for coffee or visiting. Every day they commit themselves to gleaming houses and pretty hair styles. It creeps Joanna out at first, but it's only after her few friends start inexplicably changing that Joanna starts to think that something is really wrong with the neighbourhood...

(view spoiler)[The ending of the book is an absolute killer. Joanna flees from her house without her coat, desperately trying to get to Ruthanna's before the men of the neighbourhood - who she believes are killing their wives and replacing them with robots - track her down. But they do and act oh so reasonable. What can they do to convince Joanna that everything is okay? How can they make her feel better? It is decided that if one of the wives bleeds, they can't be robots, so Joanna and the men go to Bobbie's house. In the final scene, music is blaring loudly, the men stand outside backlit by headlights, and Bobbie, creepily perfect Bobbie, beckons Joanna towards her while holding a knife. Joanna, poor Joanna, tries to convince herself that she isn't about to die. And then the scene ends on that ominous note, flashing forward to a perfect Joanna shopping in a grocery store, wearing beautiful clothing and impeccable make-up. A Joanna who, like her former friends Bobbie and Charmaine, no longer has interest in anything other than cleaning and being the perfect Stepford Wife. 

Even at the climax, readers are never quite sure whether Joanna is right. Are the wives really robots? In both movies based on this story, the robotic nature of the women is made exceptionally clear. In the book, however, there are no sparks from ears or glitchy movements. There's still plausible deniability that something so horrible could be going on. Which is fantastic because it helps the readers experience the gaslighting that Joanna undergoes. Is she crazy?What other explanations could there be for the changes in the women? All the men keep telling her to calm down and what does she have other than circumstantial evidence? Maybe the women really did just want to shift their priorities?

The Stepford Wives a book about male entitlement. Joanna was already a housewife. She dedicated herself to her family, taking only a little time to pursue her semi-professional photography hobby. But that wasn't enough. She wasn't pretty enough. She wasn't committed enough. Any woman with wants and needs of her own could never be enough, and when the option to have the perfect wife was there, all the men of Stepford gladly took it. Walter, supposedly a feminist according to his wife, either planned to move to Stepford because of what he knew he could have there, or he was convinced in a short amount of time to murder and replace his wife. When I think about the actions of the men, I shudder. Whole the world remembers the creepiness of the wives, it is the men who are the monsters of the story. 

Ira Levine was writing about the women's movement in the 1960s, but his cautionary tale still has relevance today. Men still gaslight women, telling us that we're crazy for thinking we're being treated poorly. That our expectations are too high. That we need to lower our standards and give more of ourselves. Sure, no one is turning us into mechanical beings, but not being murdered and replaced by robots is a pretty low standard to hold for decency. 
 (hide spoiler)]

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.
source: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062037602/the-stepford-wives/

The Stepford Wives

Yulande Lindsay

Sabrina D. 

Pretty slow and boring for the majority of it. Picked up in the last 30 pages. Very blatant but not terrible.

Marija M

Having read Rosemary's Baby by the author a while ago and loving it, this is such a disappointment.

Jo H

It's scary how much the author did in so few pages... and this is definately a HORROR story, no matter what anyone may say.

Kate

A super fun, quick and easy read. I wish I had gone into it not knowing what it was about, as it meant the majority of the suspense and the ‘big reveal’ were a little wasted on me but it was nonetheless an entertaining read and I’m now super intrigued to watch the movie adaptations, as I’m hoping they will add a depth to the plot I felt this was slightly lacking in.

The stepford wives a new novel by the author of Rosemary's Baby