Seven Brides for Seven…Oh, Never Mind. ‘Evelyn Hugo’ is Terrific.

March 18, 2024 Examiner Media

Review An assessment or critique of a service, product, or creative endeavor such as art, literature or a performance.

By Michael Malone

“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” is a unique and highly entertaining novel. It is about a fictional movie star in old age, reflecting on her colorful career, her seven husbands and the one soulmate she had across the years. (Hint: It’s not one of the seven husbands.)

The book offers an inventive setup. Monique is a young journalist, a low-level staffer at a trendy magazine. She gets called into her editor’s office and gets a most unlikely assignment: A profile – the profile – of aging film star Evelyn Hugo. Editor Frankie did not pick Monique to write this vital feature. Hugo said the interview only happens if Monique conducts it.

Monique is, of course, shocked. There are several higher-profile writers on the staff at Vivant. How would the movie star even know her, much less demand her?

Monique goes to Evelyn’s giant New York apartment to meet the star and do the interview.

It turns out Hugo has something else in mind. She doesn’t want the magazine piece, but instead wants Monique to write her life story. She has some secrets to share, and wants Monique to share them – after Evelyn dies. It will be a biography that will sell a trillion copies and make Monique fabulously wealthy and famous.

WTF, wonders Monique. Why me?

Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” She also wrote “Daisy Jones and The Six,” about a young singer-songwriter making her way in the 1970s Los Angeles rock scene. That, too, has a creative setup – an oral history, as one often sees in non-fiction, though all the quotes and sources are fictional.

As the title suggests, ‘The Seven Husbands’ offers a detailed account of the seven guys otherworldly gorgeous Evelyn marries. She does not marry for love. Born to a poor immigrant family in New York, she will do just about anything to make it in Hollywood, including marrying a movie star to elevate her profile in Hollywood, or even to promote an upcoming film.

First up is the Hollywood heartthrob Don Adler in 1957. Evelyn is legitimately enamored of Adler, but soon learns he is abusive. Then there’s lounge singer Mick Riva, but that one only lasted a day or two. Rex North is another movie star, born in Iceland, and producer Harry Cameron.

Hugo did truly love Cameron, but not in the husband-and-wife kind of way. Cameron is a gay man, closeted the way the vast majority was at the time.

Hugo, for her part, is bisexual. Early in her career, she met another actress, Celia St. James, on the set of “Little Women.” There was a spark, and the spark never really went out.

Since being publicly gay will doom her career, she marries Harry and Celia marries Rams quarterback John Braverman, who is also gay. They can double date, with Evelyn and Celia exploring their relationship, and Harry and John doing the same.

Without the public knowing their true selves.

The foursome eventually moves to New York. Even in the pre-internet, pre-smartphone age, it’s a little hard to believe that two famous actresses and a famous producer and famous quarterback could pursue same-sex relationships in a giant city – New York or Los Angeles – without suspicion ever climbing above people whispering to each other.

Evelyn and Celia eventually split up, and quarterback John dies. Evelyn gets married a few more times, including to a French director who casts her in some risqué films that showcase new aspects of the actress, and lots of skin.

But Evelyn’s love for Celia, and vice versa, never wavers.

Amidst Evelyn’s life story, Monique deals with her own life. Her marriage to David is dissolving. She’s trying to keep editor Frankie at bay, telling her the Hugo piece is coming, though it’s taking a while, and not letting on that she’s been conscripted as Evelyn’s biographer. Monique lost her father when she was a young girl, and her mother is planning a visit from California.

Monique says of her mother: “She’s always had such a great laugh. It’s very care-free, very young. Mine is inconsistent. Sometimes it’s loud; sometimes it’s wheezy. Other times I sound like an old man. David used to say he thought my old-man laugh was the most genuine, because no one in their right mind would want to sound like that.”

As the book nears the end, Jenkins Reid drops a doozy of a plot twist, and Monique finds the true reason why Evelyn demanded she do the interview. I’m on the fence about this plot twist. It felt a wee bit far-fetched, but I always appreciate a big swing by an author, and this one certainly was.

Either way, it’s a fabulous novel. Evelyn is a complicated character – conniving and cunning and at times awful – but you like her and root for her nonetheless. As an eminently relatable and human A-list movie star, she’s a unique creation. When her time with Evelyn concludes, Monique does not like the movie star, but is clearly influenced by her, in a positive way.

The novel came out in 2017. It’s got a whopping 4.43 average rating, out of 5, on GoodReads, with nearly three million readers weighing in. You simply do not see numbers like that on GoodReads. Reviews for the book in established media outlets are hard to come by. Meanwhile, the novel was reviewed extensively by bloggers, presumably because Reid was not a known author when ‘The Seven Husbands’ was published.

That surprised me.

Kirkus Reviews said, “Reid’s heroine reveals her darkest secrets as if she were wiping off makeup at the end of the night – a celebration of human frailty that speaks to the Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor in us all.”

Reid is one helluva storyteller. As Monique’s time with Evelyn winds down, the writer says of the movie star, “She’s such a spectacular woman – by which I mean she, herself, is a spectacle. But she’s also deeply, deeply human. And it is simply impossible, for me, in this moment, to remain objective. Against all journalistic integrity, I simply care about her too much not to be moved by her pain, not to feel for all she has felt.”

Journalist Michael Malone lives in Hawthorne with his wife and two children.