Books in Brief: The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (Random House, 145 pp., $4.95). Two of Levin’s earlier novels, A Kiss before Dying and Rosemary’s Baby, rate among the best thrillers of the past few decades. This one, however, doesn’t make it. After four months in the New York suburb of Stepford, talented, intelligent women intent on careers suddenly metamorphose into docile super-housekeepers straight out of the TV ads. Why? Chemicals in the Stepford water supply? Strange operations performed in the sinister Stepford Men’s Association hall? Or is it . . .? But there’s no need to spoil Levin’s plot here. You can’t. He does it himself, and at the end of the novel you still don’t know why. But no doubt some bright script writer will straighten that out, for if ever a book were aimed straight at the movies, this is it. The chapters are extremely short and scenic. The characters are always arranged as if for the camera, with the frontal development of each of the wives a focal concern, their resources amply suited for display by Hollywood’s finest. (One of the more voluptuous of the wives is pointedly compared to Raquel Welch in several places.) A bust of a novel, but it’ll make good busty cinema.

JC

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J. R. Coyne Jr.

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The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (Random House, 145 pp., $4.95). Two of Levin’s earlier novels, A Kiss before Dying and Rosemary’s Baby, rate among the best thrillers of the past few decades. This one, however, doesn’t make it. After four months in the New York suburb of Stepford, talented, intelligent women intent on careers suddenly metamorphose into docile super-housekeepers straight out of the TV ads. Why? Chemicals in the Stepford water supply? Strange operations performed in the sinister Stepford Men’s Association hall? Or is it . . .? But there’s no need to spoil Levin’s plot here. You can’t. He does it himself, and at the end of the novel you still don’t know why. But no doubt some bright script writer will straighten that out, for if ever a book were aimed straight at the movies, this is it. The chapters are extremely short and scenic. The characters are always arranged as if for the camera, with the frontal development of each of the wives a focal concern, their resources amply suited for display by Hollywood’s finest. (One of the more voluptuous of the wives is pointedly compared to Raquel Welch in several places.) A bust of a novel, but it’ll make good busty cinema.