The Stepford Wives: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: The Stepford Influence
Review: With The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin perhaps defines one particular style of horror or suspense fiction. Taking a normal situation and turning it upside down, eerily so, Levin blazed a trail for authors like Stephen King or Bentley Little. Levin presents readers with the town of Stepford, a remote suburb away from the grind of big-town living. Idyllic, inviting and almost utopian, Levin begins to introduce oddities, imperfections that lead both the protagonist and the reader to conclude that certain things aren't what they seem. And of course, they're not.

After reading The Stepford Wives, I was immediately surprised at how much influence the novel obviously had on some more contemporary horror and suspense authors - Andrew Neiderman's Amnesia and Neighborhood Watch as well as Bentley Little's The Association owe a lot Levin's Stepford.