The Stepford Wives (1972) by Ira Levin

Nicole Kidman in the 2004 movie version of The Stepford Wives

1001 Novels: A Library of America

 The Stepford Wives (1972) 

by Ira Levin

Stepford, Connecticut (Wilton, Connecticut)

Connecticut: 3/9

   The edition that I read was published by English film magazine Sight & Sound and it featured a foreword by the DIRECTOR of the film version Bryan Forbes which mostly him complaining about casting issues.   Very unusual.  The Stepford Wives is one of those books that was integrated in wider popular culture- I remember my mother complaining about other women in my well-off Bay Area suburb in the 80's and 90's as "Stepford Wives".  The book was a hit- of course- author Ira Levin managed to land one of the seminal novels of the 60's: Rosemary's Baby and then this book in the 70's, both books aided by popular movie versions.

  Levin doesn't quite make it into the international canon of literature- like Stephen King there is an argument about whether his books qualify as literature or are mere popular fiction.  BUT whatever your feeling about underlying merit there can be no doubt that The Stepford Wives is a very Connecticut book, that it takes place there and that people continue to associate the bedroom suburbs of Connecticut with the locations in this big.

  The Stepford Wives is not long- barely one hundred pages.  The writing is workmanlike at best, but the idea of men replacing their wives with (spoiler alert) animatronic robots has proved to be evergreen- I'm pretty sure Dont' Worry Baby, a movie that came out last year, was a reworking of that theme.