Brief blurb: Levin's classic about creepy hausfraus introduced by film director, Bryan Forbes.

What's it all about? Written at the heyday of Women's Lib, The Stepford Wives is a tale of two sites. The site of male anxiety, circa 1972, fanned by tabloid tales of bra burning and the de-feminisation of women, becomes in Levin’s literary suburbia, the sinister Male Association with its plot to transform every housewife into a compliant, busty page 3 stunner.

The site of female paranoia is personified by new-to-town Joanna Eberhart, who, as a feminist and photographer, sees The Stepford Wives for what they are: ‘they work like robots all their lives’. ‘Stepford is out of step,’ she complains. In an age of new men and female MPs, it seems remarkably unsubtle. But, at the time, the Women's Liberation Movement protested violently against the film (director Forbes was even struck with an umbrella). And Diane Keaton got such ‘bad vibes’ from the script she turned down the leading role, which eventually went to Katherine Ross. Perhaps even harder to digest is that the film never made it to general release in the UK. It did, of course, become a cult classic, so familiar, in fact, the title itself is now an everyday part of language.