booksiloved.com - Book reviews of books the reviewer really liked

A review of The Stepford Wives

by Ira Levin

A creepy 1970's classic about suburban housewives who are just a little too perfect.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Santiago
About Jennifer Santiago

The Stepford Wives In an affluent Connecticut suburb, children play on manicured lawns, men drive down Route 9 to high-paying jobs at the chemical and electronics corporations, and their beautiful, meticulously-coiffed wives take care of the household. It seems like a perfect place for Manhattanites Joanna and Walter Eberhart to relocate with their two young children.

While Walter adjusts to commuting to his law firm in the city, Joanna tries to befriend the local wives. A semi-professional photographer and an activist for the burgeoning women's liberation movement, Joanna is an intelligent and vibrant person with a quick wit and a variety of interests. She's disappointed when her invitations to coffee are repeatedly rebuffed by the ultra-serene, ultra-polite hausfraus who are too absorbed in housework to make any time for social engagements. Meanwhile, Walter has become a regular fraternity brother at Stepford's one thriving civic organization, the seemingly-innocuous but secretive Men's Association.

Eventually, Joanna meets Bobbie Markowe, a harried, hilarious mother of three who shares Joanna's social and political views. The two decide to canvass Stepford and gauge interest in starting a local chapter of the feminist organization NOW. All the women politely decline, saying they're too busy at home or just aren't interested in "that sort of thing." Joanna and Bobbie finally get one taker, the rich, gorgeous and feisty Charmaine. The three play tennis weekly, have long lunches, and give up on making friends with any of the other women in Stepford.

But when Charmaine returns from a long weekend with her husband, she suddenly and terrifyingly resembles a Stepford wife, even going so far as to demolish her treasured tennis court to replace it with a putting green for her husband, and telling Joanna that she'll be too busy with housework to meet for lunch anymore. Bobbie is convinced that there's something in the water system, and it's just a matter of time before she and Joanna are affected too. Bobbie begins house hunting in nearby towns, refusing to let herself be changed. And when Joanna finds an old Stepford newspaper and discovers that just a few years earlier, her robotic domestic-obsessed neighbors were part of a feminist club that hosted the likes of Betty Friedan, the mystery of the Stepford wives deepens. Will Bobbie and Joanna get to the bottom of the mystery before it's too late?

"The Stepford Wives" is a rare book, one that epitomizes the era when it was written. Levin wrote this in a time when women were being pulled in many different directions: family, career, feminism, motherhood?and women were very conflicted about their roles and desires. The tale is so haunting that its very title has seeped into our vernacular. Even thirty years after its publication, the term "Stepford wife" is slang for a vapid yet perfect housewife, and "Stepford" has become an adjective to describe any group of people or things that are eerily and inexplicably alike. "The Stepford Wives" is above all a suspenseful and fun read and a story that is destined to remain part of our collective consciousness.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: The Stepford Wives

Copyright © by Jennifer Santiago, 2003

Reviewed by Jennifer Santiago:
-- The Lovely Bones - by Alice Sebold
-- 30 Minute Meals - by Rachael Ray
-- Raising Blaze - by Debra Ginsberg
-- Backpack - by Emily Barr
-- You Are Not a Stranger Here - by Adam Haslett
-- Bookends - by Jane Green
-- A Confederacy of Dunces - by John Kennedy Toole
-- Ash Wednesday - by Ethan Hawke
-- All Saints' Day - by Brent Benoit
-- The Stepford Wives - by Ira Levin
-- The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating - by David M. Buss
-- Literary New Orleans - by Judy Long (Editor)
-- The Sopranos Family Cookbook - by Allen Rucker; Recipes by Michele Scicolone
-- Atonement - by Ian McEwan
-- The Crimson Petal and the White - by Michel Faber
-- Midnight Bayou - by Nora Roberts
-- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - by Ann Brashares
-- The Zygote Chronicles - by Suzanne Finnamore
-- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - by J.K. Rowling









Home ------- All the Reviews