THE STEPFORD WIVES
by Ira Levin
I wish I’d written this ...
... because it's psychologically disturbing and stuck with me for days after I finished reading it.
Familiarity with the film dampens what might have been a bigger reveal than otherwise but doesn’t completely spoil this brisk and engaging read. Levin tends to signpost his plot points a little too much but compensates with sparse prose that keeps the tale rattling along to its disturbing conclusion. And honestly, the theme is such a great and still pertinent idea!
From the publisher
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.
