Ira Levin’s short novel is a masterclass in pacing and structure. Is it really possible that the Men’s Association is murdering the town’s women and replacing them with beautiful compliant robots? And if it is, and Walter is in on it, who is going to believe Joanna and how can she save herself from the same fate? Joanna starts to believe something sinister is going on in Stepford and she only has one month left to find proof. Her frustration soon turns to fear, when, like clockwork, four months after their arrival in Stepford, first Charmaine and then Bobbie morph overnight into glamourous homemakers. Her attempts to start up a Woman’s Association are met with apathy, all the women are too busy with housework to attend. Joanna also has reservations when Walter declares his intention to join the local Men’s Association, which is steeped in secrecy.

Joanna, a photographer and feminist who follows the work of Friedan and Steinem, and shares the chores with Walter, finds their perfection jarring – ‘they even fill their shopping carts neatly!’ – but she finds solace in friendships with the free-spirited Bobbie and with Charmaine, who loves tennis, astrology and turning down her husband’s sexual advances. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. “These things came out nice and white, didn’t they?” Kit put the folded T-shirt into the laundry basket, smiling. All are beautiful, well-dressed and obsessed with doing housework and looking after their family. Stepford has what the family has been looking for a different pace of life, a larger home and safer streets, but what Joanna hasn’t expected is the lifestyle of the women.

Joanna Eberhart, along with her husband Walter and their two children have moved from New York City to the suburban Connecticut town of Stepford.

If you don’t know the plot, then be warned, this post contains spoilers, so you might want to stop reading now! It is in part thanks to the film adaptation that The Stepford Wives has become a modern horror classic, but even if you know the plot, the novel is well worth reading.

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin