The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin

A quick note to say that if you would like to help me with the running costs of the book group, you can give a small contribution via Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/annabookgroup or PayPal: anna_savva@live.co.uk

Thank you to everyone who helped me with the Meetup fees in 2024.

November's meetup is taking place a little earlier in the month than usual. It will be the last one of 2025 as we'll take a break for Christmas! We will meet from 6:30 onwards at the pub and go to the room upstairs between 6:30 and 7:00. Please check with the bar staff before going up that the room is ready and please don't go up before our start time. We will start the discussion at around 7:00pm and talk about the book for an hour or so before having a break. Then we can vote on next month's book.

If you have any suggestions for short(ish) books for the next shortlist, please message me ahead of time.

Thanks!

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The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin (1972, 144 pages)

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret—a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

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Shortlist for January

Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev (1862, 244 pages)

Bazarov—a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man—has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia.

Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world.

My Loose Thread - Dennis Cooper (2002, 128 pages)

Larry is a teenager wrestling not only with his sexuality and the implications of a physical relationship with his younger brother, but with the very point of his existence. He is numb to almost all that surrounds him.

As the book opens, Larry has been paid $500 by a senior to kill a fellow pupil and retrieve the boy's notebook. It seems simple enough. However, once Larry delves into the notebook, complications arise.

An immensely powerful work that explores teenage depression, moral vacuity and the confusion of love, My Loose Thread is a claustrophobic and harrowing piece of fiction.

The Lifeboat - Charlotte Rogan (2012, 279 pages)

In the summer of 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying Grace Winter and her husband Henry across the Atlantic suffers a mysterious explosion. Setting aside his own safety, Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die.

Adrift on the Atlantic, the weather deteriorating and supplies dwindling, the caraways scheme and battle, caught up in a vicious power struggle between ruthless but experienced sailor and an enigmatic matron with surprising powers of persuasion.

Choosing a side will seal her fate, but Grace has made her way in the world by seizing every possible advantage. As she recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met and considers the new life of privilege she thought she'd found, Grace must now decide: Will she pay any price to keep it?

The Lifeboat is a masterful debut, a story of hard choices, ambition, and entertainment narrated by a woman as complex and unforgettable as the events she describes.