The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: The woman that captivated Hollywood for decades is ready to tell all. As Evelyn Hugo dishes out the often heartbreaking and sometimes sordid details of her rise to the top and efforts to stay there, Monique Grant – the low-level reporter hand-selected by Hugo to shepherd her story – can’t shake the feeling their lives are interconnected.
Expectation: A tale from the Golden Age of Hollywood full of the usual themes – alcoholism, wealth, abuse, divorce, backstabbing and redemption.
Reality: All of the above plus a surprising love story, affecting friendship and a twist at the end that pulls it all together.
Recommended For: Fans of Hollywood glamour, and people that recently enjoyed Ryan Murphy’s “Hollywood” on Netflix – a very close cousin to this story – but with less revisionist history.
Why I Read It: My friend, colleague and fellow avid reader named it one of her favorites in 2019.
My Take: “You’re not really famous if anyone still likes you.”
A line from “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” that perfectly captures the feelings I have towards the title character.
Portrayed as the one of the biggest stars Hollywood has ever produced – like a conglomeration of Elizabeth Taylor drama and Sophia Loren glamour – I’m still trying to determine if I like her. Honestly, all I know is Evelyn Hugo wouldn’t care.
I feel like I’ve lived my entire life knowing about Evelyn Hugo and need to remind myself that she didn’t actually star in a 1950s version of Little Women or a 1970s X-rated arthouse film that won her costar and ex-husband an Oscar and got her scolded by mainstream America.
Herein lies the genius of Taylor Jenkins Reid.
She leveraged enough common knowledge about Hollywood stars and scandal for the reader to draw comparisons that made this feel like a celebrity biography, but she also used Monique as a way to root Evelyn in humanity so we could understand her champagne problems were really there to mask a long held secret.
Evelyn is richly drawn, complex and morally ambiguous. She’s unapologetically driven by her own ambition and rarely second guesses her actions. It is exactly how you expect a Hollywood icon to be.
I see now that Reid tried to replicate this formula with Daisy Jones and the Six, and while I enjoyed that story, in hindsight, Daisy was nothing compared to Evelyn. Maybe it’s because Hollywood is more interesting to me than 70s rock, but I think it’s because Daisy Jones and the Six just felt like an episode of Behind the Music I’d seen a dozen times before.
After a third of the way through Evelyn’s story, I thought we were heading down the same enjoyable, but familiar, path. Then Reid took the typical Hollywood star tropes and flipped the script.
[spoiler alert]
As much as I love LGBTQ stories, I had no idea this was one of them! It was one of two truly surprising moments in the book, and the reason you can still read about her seven husbands and not feel like you’ve heard it all before.
Evelyn’s perspective on fame and hiding in plain sight during one of the most tumultuous times for LGBTQ people in America was equal parts fascinating and heartbreaking. Again, it makes me wish that Evelyn and her lifelong love and fellow movie icon Celia St. James were real people that the gay community could now recognize and celebrate.
We rarely hear about living in the closet from a famous woman’s point of view – let alone a bisexual’s – and I appreciated the way Reid didn’t shy away from the questions (why did she marry seven men?) that any person learning the truth about Evelyn would have.
In the end, her connection to Monique proved surprising – even if a little far-fetched – but helped wrap up the story in a way that felt authentic and fitting of a Hollywood legend.
Rating (story): 4.5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 4/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: June 12 – June 18, 2020
Multi-tasking: Fine, but you’ll miss some of the nuance in Reid’s storytelling.
