Book #48 for 2010
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, 1972, 208 pages.
I've heard the expression "a stepford wife" for years without knowing what it means, so I was pleased to take the opportunity to read the book and find out for myself. It was a quick read: a book I could pick up and put down again in a couple of hours yesterday afternoon before the power blackout that lasted for 12 hours.
The story is of Joanna and Walter and their two children, who move to a pretty town named Stepford, where almost all of the women are passionately attached to housework. They cannot be moved aside from their constant need to be waxing floors, organizing closets, and dusting blinds, and newcomer Joanna and one of the other non-obsessed women in town decide to find out what is behind this strange behaviour. A semi-professional photographer and an ardent feminist, and therefore completely out of step with the passionate domesticity of the townswomen, Joanna really begins to panic when her friend becomes one of the all-clean and no-coffee crowd, and begins to worry about her own fate....
I enjoyed the book. It was light reading, but there was an overall creepiness to it that had a professional polish, and an ending that was really unexpected. I've downloaded another of his books, Rosemary's Baby, to my e-reader [I haven't seen the film of this one either], and as I'm not progressing through Dostoevsky's The Idiot with any interest, may turn to Ira Levin again very soon for some more easy reading in between chapters of Russian lit.
I've heard the expression "a stepford wife" for years without knowing what it means, so I was pleased to take the opportunity to read the book and find out for myself. It was a quick read: a book I could pick up and put down again in a couple of hours yesterday afternoon before the power blackout that lasted for 12 hours.
The story is of Joanna and Walter and their two children, who move to a pretty town named Stepford, where almost all of the women are passionately attached to housework. They cannot be moved aside from their constant need to be waxing floors, organizing closets, and dusting blinds, and newcomer Joanna and one of the other non-obsessed women in town decide to find out what is behind this strange behaviour. A semi-professional photographer and an ardent feminist, and therefore completely out of step with the passionate domesticity of the townswomen, Joanna really begins to panic when her friend becomes one of the all-clean and no-coffee crowd, and begins to worry about her own fate....
I enjoyed the book. It was light reading, but there was an overall creepiness to it that had a professional polish, and an ending that was really unexpected. I've downloaded another of his books, Rosemary's Baby, to my e-reader [I haven't seen the film of this one either], and as I'm not progressing through Dostoevsky's The Idiot with any interest, may turn to Ira Levin again very soon for some more easy reading in between chapters of Russian lit.