The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, Peter Straub
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Book Reviews of The Stepford Wives
Book Review: My favourite English book
Summary: 5 Stars
The book ?Stepford Wives" has impressed me. That's my first book from Ira Levin.I like this book. It's easy to read and I like this special style of horror or suspense fiction. When I started reading the book, I had my problems. But later I realized this was a great book. I like this story and I would recommend it.
Book Review: Hollywood can't kill it
Summary: 5 Stars
An amazing horror/dystopian fiction from one of my all-time favorite authors. Forget the Hollywood treatments (as interesting as they are). This is the source material, not a satire. Creepy, chilling, and provocative in a ll the right ways.
Scott Nicholson
The Red Church vs. They Hunger
Book Review: An Entertaining and Topical Chiller
Summary: 4 Stars
Ira Levin is, hands down, the best suspense thriller author out there. His novels are quick affairs that are fun to read but leave you thinking once it's all over. Like no other, Levin can make an impossible situation seem entirely within the realm of possibility. Robot housewives? Satanic babies? Hitler clones?His career covers it all, and in circumstances just real enough to make you wonder if it could happen to you. "The Stepford Wives" came out in a decade when feminism was taking hold of the nation and making the future of gender roles uncertain. Would women leave the home forever -- taking jobs away from men who feel entitled to them and forcing them to cook and wash their own laundry? Not if the men of Stepford, Connecticut can help it. Through the desperate, brutal actions of the Stepford Men's Association Levin makes bold statements about how women had been chained to their home lives and made to sacrifice their own desires and their very humanity for the sake of their family. The true success of Levin's chilling parable is how timeless it has proven to be. Sure, specific details have become dated since the 1972 publication date, but the message is still on target -- just look to the tabloid-infused botox-ification of society that occurs today for proof. "The Stepford Wives" is a great summer read for the beach, vacations, or rainy days when you're stuck indoors. Like "The DaVinci Code," it has intelligence woven into its pot-boiler outline -- but fortunately it has better writing to back it up. It's a guilty pleasure that isn't so guilty after all.
As an aside: "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives" (Levin's most famous works) suffer some from the fact that by now most people know what happens in the end, but don't let that deter you. The joy of getting there will still carry you through nicely; the fun is no longer in the surprise twist but in picking up on the clues that get you there (think of it as seeing "The Sixth Sense" knowing that Bruce Willis is dead and still appreciating the movie for the craftmanship that hid it from original audiences).
Book Review: Great Creepy Story
Summary: 4 Stars
Joanna and her husband Walter think life in Stepford will be fabulous. The school system is great for their two young children, the neighborhood is nice, and they are thrilled to be getting out of the crowded and dirty city. Once they move in, though, Joanna finds herself mildly unhappy. She is a progressive woman who has hobbies and outside interests, and she would like to find outgoing women friends who share her passions. Instead, she finds a bunch of women who seem content to stay at home and do hours of housework every day.
Finally Joanna meets a couple of other women in town who are much like she is. They decide it isn't fair there is a men's social club in town but no women's organization, so they decide to start one. None of the women with whom they speak seem interested or seem to have the time, though. Joanna and her friends are willing to believe that these other women are just different from them, but then Joanna comes across an old newspaper article about activities of a women's club in town--and some of the women with whom she spoke were active members of the club.
Could there be something in the environment of the town that changes women from interesting human beings into passive housework machines, concerned only about catering to their husbands? Will Joanna figure out what is going on before she, too, is changed forever?
This book totally creeped me out, and I kept waiting for a happy ending. I liked that there wasn't one, that Levin didn't take the easy way out in resolving this story.
Book Review: Surprise guilty pleasure
Summary: 4 Stars
I was fortunate enough to find this little book in a used book store for 25 cents and I was glad I did. I flew through this in 2 hours and couldn't put it down. Joanna Eberhart is seemingly content with the move to the suburbs and is hopeful for a brand new start. However, things are not always as they appear. Her neighbors are beautiful, vapid, and obsessively content with their household chores. Joanna is a no holds barred feminist and so finds their behavior strange. She manages to befriend two other women new to Stepford and they too, are concerned with the lack interest displayed by the Stepford wives. One by one, her new friends are whisked away by their husbands on a "weekend for two", only to return beautiful and suddenly bent on domestic duties. More disturbing is the fact that the husbands belong to a "Mens' Only" association and women are not allowed. That is how it begins. The husbands join the elusive and mysterious group and strange things begin to happen. Joanna tries to alert her husband to these strange occurances and is distraught by his theory and his advice to talk to "someone". Who can she trust now? She soon discovers that the Stepford women were active in Feminst groups but disbanded years before. Will Joanna be next? Or is it all in her mind? You'll have to read this to find out. This book was a complete surprise, not to mention disturbing. But as a guilty pleasure read, I highly recommend it!