Clandestine Meetings & Love Affairs
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins-Reid, 2017
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a work of historical fiction written by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novel is an intricate study of human nature that delves into the true cost of fame, the commodification of women in Hollywood, and the difficulty of coming to terms with one’s own identity.
Overview
The 2017 book centers on Monique, a journalist struggling to make a name for herself who accepts an offer to interview the mysterious and reclusive 1960s Hollywood superstar Evelyn Hugo about fame, controversy, and love. Why would Evelyn choose an unknown magazine reporter for the job? Why her? Why now?
Monique is welcomed to Evelyn’s opulent apartment and listens in intrigue as the actress narrates her tale. Evelyn tells a story of relentless ambition, unexpected friendship, and great forbidden love from the 1950s when she first arrived in Los Angeles to the 1980s when she decided to quit the entertainment industry. Of course, she also mentions the seven marriages she had along the way.
Plot Summary
Evelyn Hugo, the legendary singer, asks struggling Vivant Magazine junior reporter Monique Grant to conduct her first interview in decades. When Monique arrives, she discovers that Evelyn has other plans, including a tell-all about her seven high-profile marriages. Despite her reservations about Evelyn’s motives, Monique accepts the position of biographer after realizing it is a career-defining opportunity.
Monique’s life contrasts sharply with Evelyn’s. She recently divorced her husband David and is dealing with both personal and professional difficulties. Frankie, her editor and supervisor, is skeptical of her ability to write a compelling article, and Monique fears that Frankie is correct. However, as she works with Evelyn, she grows more confident and eventually asks her manager for a promotion. Monique uses Evelyn’s story as a diversion from David as he desperately tries to reconcile.
At the age of 14, Evelyn marries a guy who promises to take her to Hollywood, only to divorce him when she is discovered by Harry Cameron. Evelyn describes her humble beginnings in Hell’s Kitchen, her desire to escape a life of poverty and violence, and her willingness to use her sexuality to do so. Evelyn Herrera will need to change her name, go blonde, and lose her Spanish accent in order to succeed. Evelyn gains notoriety and the world falls in love with her beauty thanks to Harry’s help.
She eventually falls in love with and weds Don Adler, the most well-known of her series of husbands. For the first two weeks of their marriage, he treats her incredibly well. Then, he starts abusing her and apologizes right away in hopes that she will forgive him. She eventually gets her wish to play Jo in Little Women, but she is worried when Celia, a younger and more brilliant actor, is cast opposite her. The two ladies grow to admire one another and become great friends, but when Evelyn’s irate maid gives information to a newspaper, things get even worse for her.
Evelyn pretends to have had three miscarriages in order to win sympathy, changing the perception that she is delaying having a baby in order to spite her husband. In any case, their romance is long over. On the other hand, the fine line between Celia and Evelyn’s relationship being platonic and romantic became blurry as it can get. Evelyn ultimately realizes to herself that she loves Celia as Don cheats on her. When Evelyn discovers Celia is a lesbian at the film’s premiere, she confesses her feelings for her. That same evening, Evelyn leaves Don for Celia.
Don’s attempts to ruin Evelyn’s career fail, but if she wants to stay in Hollywood, she must keep her relationship with Celia a secret. Despite Evelyn and Celia’s bliss together, Celia begins to resent Evelyn’s refusal to publicly embrace her. Evelyn, thinking that it was best to protect both of their careers, arranges a phony marriage with musician Mick Rivera in Las Vegas to conceal what was truly happening behind closed doors. She then misleads him into immediately annulling the marriage by acting glumly because she is afraid of being outed as a bisexual woman. Prior to doing so, she must persuade her covert girlfriend. Celia agrees, but refuses to accept it when she finds out that Evelyn has gotten pregnant. Despite the fact that she has an abortion, Celia decides she can’t deal with Evelyn’s willingness to go to such lengths to lie about their relationship. Celia then marries NFL quarterback John Braverman.
Evelyn marries again, but this time she and her husband participate as a team. Rex, her co-star, is content to sleep in a different room from her so that they can each get what they want. He tries to sleep with her one night but doesn’t push it. After two and a half years, Rex falls in love with her former co-star Joy and becomes pregnant with her, necessitating the need for an immediate justification that will still draw audiences to their films. In their most recent film, in which both of their characters are having affairs, they decide to reveal his affair with Joy and claim that she is having one with Harry.
Evelyn had a couple of fictitious marriages over the years, each of which failed after the other. All but one was an exception. Evelyn marries Harry, a long-time friend and producer, and the two have the most genuine and healthy relationship. However, it was later revealed that Harry’s true love was Celia’s husband, John. In a happy home, the four of them raise Harry and Evelyn’s daughter, Connor. The five of them start a family, but all hell breaks loose when Evelyn was asked to film a sex scene with her ex-husband, Don. Celia begs her not to do it. The only issue is that Evelyn has done it already and refuses to cut it from the film.
Celia departs for a second time after Evelyn betrays her trust once again. Evelyn, who is devastated, marries her director Max Girard in an attempt to forget Celia, but she fails. Harry encourages her to file for divorce so she can marry someone she loves, but Max is simply infatuated with the thought of her. When their marriage ends, Max discovers letters she’d started writing to Celia and realizes she’s headed to LA to meet up with her lover. He threatens to expose her, so Evelyn takes a leap of faith and convinces Celia to finally be with her, despite the fact that Celia informs her that she is dying and only has a few years left to live.
Harry drives drunk and kills himself and his lover before they can begin a life together. As soon as she spots them, Evelyn puts the lover behind the wheel to preserve Harry’s good name. When Evelyn revealed at the end of the conversation that this man was Monique’s father, Monique was forever enraged with her.
Evelyn stays in Spain with Celia for the remainder of her life. After Celia passes away, Evelyn goes back to New York to be with Connor, but the latter succumbs to breast cancer shortly after.
Evelyn dedicates her life to the truth after realizing that everyone she has ever loved has passed away, regardless of how damaging it may be to her image. Evelyn commits suicide when Monique leaves rather than enduring treatment for her terminal cancer. Monique decides she is not yet ready to forgive her, but she believes she will one day.
And at the end of her life, Evelyn was finally ready to be real. She wanted the public to know that having seven husbands doesn’t bother her anymore because they’re just husbands and she’s THE Evelyn Hugo. And anyway, once people know her truth, they will be much interested in her wife, the love of her life.
Story Analysis
Formalist/ Structuralist Criticism
Although the majority of the story action takes place in Los Angeles (as told through Evelyn’s retrospective narration), the novel is set in New York. The events of the plot take place between the 1950s and Evelyn’s death in 2017 and span her entire life. Taylor Jenkins Reid uses the setting of an “American Dream,” presented in the vivid descriptive phrases of the protagonist’s strenuous journey through the scandalous bits of Old Hollywood, to connect the reader with Evelyn, both as a character and as a symbol.
The story is told as a frame narrative, with Monique as the primary narrator recounting the unfolding events in the first person and in the present tense. The book also has an underlying narrative in which Evelyn reflects on her life events in retrospect. When narrating, Evelyn alternates between the first and second person.
Depending on whether Evelyn or Monique is narrating, the tone shifts. The tone of Monique’s story is frequently one of contemplation, surprise, emotion, and astonishment. Her story substantially parallels the reader’s experience as she reads Evelyn’s account. Evelyn utilizes her story to teach Monique life lessons based on the events she has had. Her narrative has a far more pragmatic, direct, and didactic tone. Whilst, the tone of the book is frequently dramatic and suspenseful, and Monique is constantly on edge as she waits to find out the whole reason Evelyn choose her. The tone occasionally changes to gloomy and bittersweet as Evelyn considers how all that really matters to her has been lost near the end of her life. Consequently, Monique learns to live with loss.
Sociological and Gender-Criticism
“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”
“You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.”
This novel is also fiercely and unapologetically sociopolitical. Evelyn’s experience is one of a woman navigating a male-dominated world. It is one of being a Cuban woman when racial discrimination persists. It is one of being a bisexual woman during a time when attraction to women is demonized by a whole culture. It is a story of disguising oneself behind ambition, weighing competing priorities, growing older, and never knowing if your decisions were the right ones.
“And it will be the tragedy of my life that I cannot love you enough to make you mine. That you cannot be loved enough to be anyone’s.”
In addition to being a powerful book about racism, sexuality, misogyny, and having to adhere to society’s rules, the main lesson I learned from this book is that life is short, so freakishly short, and we shouldn’t waste it pretending to be something we aren’t. And we shouldn’t spend it any less than loving the people who are worthy and deserving of our love.
“You imagine a world where the two of you can go out to dinner together on a Saturday night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.“
Lastly, this book embodies love being the currency of our struggle. It shows love and its hardships but demonstrates that this need not define us. That particular line has stuck to me because it made me realize how the LGBTQIA+ community is being denied the most basic right and freedom — to love who they wish to be with. It’s a heartbreaking truth for people who are forced to hide their sexuality from the prying eyes of a harsh society, for the fear of hatred, exclusion, and judgement.
Book Review
(Reader-Response Criticism)
Taylor Jenkins Reid is an immensely gifted writer. Her prose is beautiful, vivid, and evocative. I never felt bored or underwhelmed while reading this story. It was extremely difficult to put this book down because it was completely engrossing from start to finish.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea that love is dangerous and must be fought for. And it wasn’t until recently that I realized this may have something to do with society’s lack of acceptance of unusual relationship setups. I had the good fortune to grow up in the twenty-first century, when women who loved women and men who loved men were able to freely express themselves. When I read about and reflect on the past, I am constantly reminded of how much more dangerous, violent, and terrifying life would have been if I had been born 20 years earlier. And the idea that people braved that climate to fall in love regardless and paved the way for many others while doing so makes me feel so woefully romantic.
However, I believe that this novel is actually about Evelyn, despite its marketing. She is one of the most fascinating literary characters I have ever read about. Evelyn is flawed, convoluted, and utterly endearing. She is someone who never gave up and used her teeth and claws to succeed.
Evelyn Hugo devoted the majority of her life to not only becoming the most iconic female movie star in Hollywood but also to remaining firmly entrenched in the fickle grip of fame and fortune.
Evelyn wants to tell her story after all these years. Not the story that the public knows — her real story — which is rife with glamour, betrayal, secrets, and deception, as well as one insanely complicated love story that is so genuine that it dares to expose everything, even the ugly.
This tale is told through the heart and eyes of a woman desperate to be seen for who she is outside of her celebrity, and it takes an unflinching look at what it means to “make it”: the pride that comes with success and the trail of guilt that lingers for all those who were trampled and used in the process.
However, beneath the façade of stardom, Evelyn’s narrative transcends, and its fragments resonate with all of us because we can all recognize a little of ourselves in her challenges and victories, love and loss, hurts and pleasures. She isn’t just a brilliant fictional character; she’s also a daring illustration of how the opulent journey of life can be stripped down to only the things that actually matter.
This mystery is intricately woven and taut as it brings the plot full circle, allowing us to see both the harsh and the sacred. I wept, I smiled, and I enjoyed it all, and my heart was brimming with love for it all.
All of this is to say that this book made me go through all five stages of grief while also making me feel every kind of emotion there is, and I have no idea how that is even possible. But listen; if you read only one book this year, make it this one.