2021 EDIT: 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' remains a fantastic, breathtaking and heartbreaking book. I did not want to put it down.
A triumph.
Brava, Taylor Jenkins Reid, brava.
Final Score: 5/5
Original Review:
'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' is a brilliant gut-puncher. It is much, much more than the blurb suggests: An up-and-coming journalist, Monique Grant, who for mysterious reasons gets chosen to interview a seventy-nine-year-old Hollywood icon, named Evelyn Hugo, for an article concerning her auctioning off her famous gowns for charity and Breast Cancer Research, in New York. But the meetings are mainly about writing Evelyn's biography, revealing her truth, precisely and painstakingly in her own words. The subject of her seven marriages, and the various scandals over the course of her star-studded life, inevitably come up. Just not how Monique had expected.
'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' is not about the husbands, but about Evelyn, and her relationship with her child and with those she truly knew to be her friends. And about her one true love.
It is about Hollywood, and humanity, and growing up and around the judgmental, unforgiving spotlight from the 1950s to the present day, and it is everything that the contemporary audience - sick and tired of the same old predictable movie narrative - would dream of, in showcasing how far the Hollywood machine has come and still has far to go.
It is about Evelyn, the survivor of Hollywood and the judgmental world. She has outlived everyone she ever knew and loved, and now the world will finally hear her story - the truth laid bare, no censorship, no tabloids, no Hollywood interference only seeing what they want to see. It is all about one human being, Evelyn Hugo: real name Evelyn Herrera, changed in order to downplay her Hispanic heritage in white Hollywood.
'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' is my first five-star book of 2018, but it deserves a million. It has all the beautiful, complicated, tragic stars, making it to the top as one of my favourite books of all time. This year might start off promising.
This exceptional novel is as addictive as hell. It flows cleverly yet effortlessly, fitting into the genre of the holiday beach reads as well as the genre of the serious, life changing reads (lifetime sounds too sanctioned, saturated and saccharine for something like this). Straight white male stories are most assuredly not the focus in this tale about Hollywood, either - the majority of the cast is POC, and there is bisexual representation and criticism of forcing people into simple boxes for someone else's comfortable narrative. Friendships between women, and between women and men especially, are also a huge focus in the book. 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' celebrates the complexities of a lot of individuals - not to mention women who are allowed to be unlikeable and make hard decisions in an industry that will destroy them and cut them out of work for terrible, toxic reasons; such as daring to live to be over thirty.
Evelyn is beautiful and knows it; knows that her looks are what got her where she is, her talent as an actress having started off mediocre at best. She is proud of her body and for daring to seek sexual pleasure for herself; walking the line between wanting to help people find themselves, and protecting them and herself from bankruptcy and violence for being unconventional, "different". Her relationships with people - but especially the husband who was also her best friend, Hollywood producer Harry Cameron, and fellow iconic actress Celia St. James - are beautiful and very, very real.
The whole premise reminded me of the Satoshi Kon anime film, 'Millennium Actress', which is also about an old movie star sharing her life and career experiences in an interview in the present day. Plus it becomes clear sooner or later that the actress and interviewer are connected in some way, as Evelyn and Monique are in a twist at the journey's end that I doubt anyone would see coming, shocking and clever and strangely inevitable as it is. Although 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' focuses more on the actress's relationships than her films. Her cutting her tooth from kissing her television screen when a lover won an Oscar is beyond cute. An Oscar: a reward she would win only later on in her aging career.
This novel, this triumph, has something for everybody, whether you are interested in the Hollywood scene or not. 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me seriously think, it made me believe in love again. It made me fall in love with complex people who make mistakes, and that's fine, because it's human to keep making mistakes, be they selfish or selfless ones, in tragic consequence for hiding big parts of ourselves in conservative times. Evelyn's story is not about redemption or clearing her conscience, either, as we'll see, for she regrets nothing in the long run. It is about her truth serving to help others...
The lives of two seemingly contrasting women, Evelyn and Monique, manage to include many subjects: sexism, sex as toxic power and control, toxic masculinity, abusive relationships, racism, homophobia, biphobia, and how these are perpetuated in Hollywood in its lies and hypocrisy. There is also journalistic integrity, negotiation, handling failed relationships and divorce, letting go of the past, mixed-race relationships, secretive but loving parents, euthanasia, and cancer. None of the issues presented are easy to talk about, and are extremely hard to pull off in one narrative in a sensitive, understanding depiction. But Taylor Jenkins Reid treated each with the respect they need without it seeming like she's cramming in too much in order for her book to be seen as "relevant" (though everything here is vitally relevant). She fits all the issues in in a way that comes together, like a puzzle, towards the end, in an ingenious stroke. It's not perfect, but neither are human lives, tragic as that fact is. If anything, the pacing is perfectly even, nowhere overcrowded.
So for a great experience like going to the movie theater, but better since this is significantly real, featuring real, flawed people, unafraid to show that queer people, non-white people, strong women, and female relationships have always existed - and will be given the spotlight they have always deserved - read the deceptively-titled 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo'. There is a lot going on underneath the glittering, glamorous, "scandalous" surface.
Fall in love as I have, you won't regret it.
Final Score: 5/5
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