The Stepford Wives

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. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️