When Monique, a junior journalist, is personally approached to interview famous and gorgeous 79 year old movie star Evelyn Hugo about her donations, Monique’s journalism company is confused but allows her to go alone. As it turns out, Evelyn doesn’t want an article about her dresses but for Monique to write her full authorised biography about her career and titular seven husbands- all now dead so their ‘authorisation’ isn’t needed!
It’s always difficult for such a hyped book to impress but I tried to go in with as little information as possible- and succeeded as the only thing I really knew was what the title says. Evelyn is such a larger than life character and yet each of her husbands’ characters is well-developed, whilst ultimately aiding to show us why we see her as we do in present day. Being in Monique’s head allowed us to get to know her quite quickly. Because much of the book is in the past, she probably would have been overshadowed by her subject, as her storyline is somewhat later, but that didn’t matter too much because we’d already gotten so much of her in a short period. It’s so interesting to see this time period in Hollywood from an ambitious woman’s point of view, discussing important issues of sexism and homophobia in a sometimes shocking and emotional way.
Rating: A*
SPOILER ALERT
The problems is: Evelyn won’t allow Monique to tell her company she’s ‘working against them’ so she has to lie. Both women lost a parent they adored when they were young, want to gain some gumption, and Evelyn multiple times but Monique only once, are going through divorces. Monique gets up some confidence and convinces Evelyn to give Vivant an exclusive and a cover so she won’t lose her job and reputation, and will even gain a promotion. In another area, she tells her separated husband to give up and move on.
Evelyn first married when she was 14- although she told her husband she was older- because she was a Mexican girl who wanted to escape her father in Hell’s Kitchen for Hollywood. Because her mother died, she thought the only way she could do this was to marry someone heading there, so she wasn’t fully honest about her personality to her first husband and their estrangement was inevitable. She heads to a famous spot for people to be signed, and after getting a waitress job there, she gets a manager- and future gay best friend/husband- Harry Cameron. She does whatever she needs to get ahead: changing her name; dying her hair; editing her accent; sleeping with a producer; divorcing her husband to be a sex symbol who dates famous actors.
Eventually she falls for and marries the most famous of these: Don Adler. He’s great to her for the first two weeks of their marriage. Then he starts to abuse her, apologizing straight after so she’ll forgive him. The dream role of Jo in Little Women that she has been pushing for is finally greenlit but she’s worried when a younger, more talented actress Celia is cast alongside her. The two women grow to respect each other and become best friends but more goes wrong for Evelyn when her angry maid sells information to a paper. To change the image of her as holding out on a baby to spite her husband, she pretends to have had 3 miscarriages to gain sympathy. Anyway, their relationship has long been over. Don is cheating on her and she finally admits to herself that she loves Celia, secretly moving in with her.
But because of the time, Evelyn is terrified of being exposed as a bisexual woman so she decides to convince singer Mike Riva to elope with her in Vegas then trick him into immediately annulling the marriage by being so unenthusiastic. Before she does this she also has to convince her secret girlfriend. Celia agrees, but refuses to accept it when she learns Evelyn has gotten pregnant. Even though Evelyn gets an abortion, Celia decides she can’t deal with the fact that she’s willing to go so far to lie about their relationship.
Evelyn’s next message is just as planned, but this time she and her husband are in it together. Her co-star Rex is happy to sleep in different rooms so they can both get what they want- he does try to sleep with her one night but doesn’t push it. The arrangement lasts for two and a half years before Rex falls for her ex co-star Joy and gets pregnant with her so they need a quick excuse that will still get butts in seats for their movies together. They decide to reveal his affair with Joy and say she has been having one with Harry as in their new movie their characters have been doing the same. Evelyn needs someone who hates her to tip the paps off about the ‘affair’ so she asks Ruby to help her- feeling bad when she discovers Don did the same to her ex best friend. But Harry asks her to marry and have kids with him because he wants a family, with the idea that he can be with his crush, Celia’s fiance, while Evelyn is also with the love of her life. The five of them- including Harry and Celia’s baby Connor- become a family, but although Celia agrees to it, she is jealous that Celia had to sleep with Harry, and asks her not to do a sex scene with her ex-husband Don. The only problem is that Evelyn has already done it and refuses to cut it.
Celia leaves her husband John and thus Evelyn. Evelyn finally wins her oscar for a role as a single mother but feels alone without Celia. Max directed both these films and wins along with her. They go for food together and he asks her to marry him. Harry encourages her to get a divorce so she can marry someone she loves, but Max only loves the idea of her. At the end of their marriage, Max finds letters she has begun to correspond with Celia and realises she is going to LA to reunite with her lover. He threatens to out her so Evelyn convinces Celia to be with her- even though Celia tells her she is dying and has a timeline of a few years. Harry has been distraught for years after John died but now he has fallen in love again and has the idea that they remarry whilst Celia and his new lover marry and they can revive their arrangement. But drunk Harry and his lover are in a car accident and both die.
Evelyn covers up Harry’s mistake to preserve his reputation, marrying her last husband, Celia’s brother. She, Robert, Celia and the troublesome Connor move to Spain but it’s good for Connor as she is inspired by Robert and goes to a great college. Celia and Evelyn secretly marry but that doesn’t make Celia’s death any less painful. Then Robert dies, followed by Connor. The breast cancer her daughter died of is catching up to Evelyn and now she has chosen Monique to tell everything because her father is the one Harry was with, whom she blamed for the accident. This reframes Monique’s memories of her father, he is no longer a drunk who caused an accident, but he also didn’t have romantic love with her mother. Finally, Evelyn entrusts the fact that she is going to kill herself to control how she leaves the world. Monique decides that she is not yet ready to forgive her, but one day she thinks she will.
Quotes
“Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box.”
“Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.”
“Isn’t it convenient that when men make the rules, the one thing they look down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat?”
“It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.”
“When you realise you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘you’re safe with me’… that’s intimacy.”
Into New Realms 