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Saturday, December 27, 2014

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

I have always been told that The Stepford Wives book was better than the movie. Truth be told I'm not so sure about that opinion now.

I'm a true fan of the movie version featuring Nicole Kidman and as I began to read Ira Levin's story I felt as though the plot was sticking rather well to the movie. But somewhere around the time when there was suddenly no details to the life within Stepford did I become increasingly lost. Yes, the daily grind that Joanna goes through is described along with the sudden fear in which she harbors, but this was not until the end.

The book felt empty compared to the movie. But more compounding was my utter confusion in the end. I understand based on the movie what happens, but there was no evidence of the robotic clones as evidence throughout the book. Do the women change? Yes, but without explanation, leaving the reader lost. The behaviors of these women just changed.

Could be drugs, hypnotism, or as in the movie computer chips. Could the missing pieces to allow for the reader to build their own story? What about the politics within the community? Maybe by watching the movie more times than I can count I found myself lost on this book.

Overall it's a good read, but I found so much to be missing that the ending was more confusing than it was fulfilling. I would have to say that the movie was better than the book this time around.

4 comments:

  1. I have not read or watched the movie. I know there has been movies that I've thought did a better job at explaining a plot than a book did. .I was just talking about this the other day actually. I can't think of many movies that did this, but I think Divergent #1 movie held pretty close to the book but I think with the next movies, the future movies will fill in a lot of plot holes that the writing wasn't able to.

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  2. Jessi, Thanks for the comment!

    I have found numerous times where the book is way better in explaining the plot line, but this one just didn't do it for me. I literally had to ask someone "what did I miss?" when finishing this book. I have to read Divergent it's on my reading list, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

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