Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives

I finished this book in one day. I'm back, baby!

(Well, the book IS about 110 pages long, so yeah...).

Anyway, as with many of the books I've read, I've always seen the screen adaptation of it first. So goes this one as well, which means that I've already seen the ending coming. But that doesn't make it a bad read; I just know the entire story already. The back cover states that the book shows how far men would go to stem the 1970's feminist movement, which I feel is a great description, since back then, equal rights are still something entirely novel.

For those of you who haven't seen the movie, here's what happens: Joanna and her family move to the town of Stepford, and find out that the Men's Association runs the town, and the housewives there are subservient drones who only care about housekeeping activities and making their husbands happy. *winkwink*. Joanna and her friend, Bobbie (also a newcomer to the town, but had moved in a month before Joanna), see their friends drastically change, and try to move their families out, but too late for Bobbie, she also becomes another Stepford wife. Joanna does more digging, and finds out that originally, the town had a Women's Association (of 50 members, no less), before it got disbanded due to declining membership. She also finds out that most of the men in the Men's Association are either scientists or engineers. *coughrobotscough*. Joanna rushes home to collect her kids and get out, but too late, her husband's also in on the, um, evilplot, already. Poor Joanna also falls afoul of the Stepford men, and well, let's just say she's never her old usual self again.

The only thing I don't really dig is the bit before the end. Joanna runs away, before three dudes from the Men's Ass corner and confront her. She voices out her suspicions that all the women have become robots; the men say that their wives are still human, and that to prove it, they'll take her to Bobbie (whom by then, has no mind of her own anymore), who'll cut herself and bleed, disproving Joanna's robot allegation. So she goes with them to Bobbie's place.

At Bobbie's place, Joanna hears loud music upstairs, and as Bobbie picks up the knife to poke herself (Yeah, right!), Joanna realises too late that the music's to drown out any hanky-panky (and I don't mean that in the 'usual' way) that's about to happen. Her last thoughts are that Bobbie poking herself would prove that she's human, and that everything would be okay.

(At this point, I was like, "Whuh-?" I mean, I get that she's trying to fight over her paranoia, hoping against hope (I got that phrase from Robin Hood: Men In Tights hahaha) that she's not overreacting about something which she could be entirely wrong about, but honestly, robot or no robot, Things Have Changed!! Who cares about the robot issue, even if you didn't foresee that Bobbie holding a knife = Not very good circumstances, run and fight for your friggin' life, ya moron! 'Last thoughts...')

At least the 1975 movie showed Joanna getting strangled by her robot alter-ego.