The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, pt. 2: the Extended Review

Did you read the book? Do you hate me? Are you ready for my real review?

(It’s fine if you haven’t read it as long as you don’t mind a million spoilers. I am taking it apart piece by piece.)

Content warnings for this review: mentions of sexual exploitation, misogyny, body image issues, domestic abuse, sex (not explicit), homophobia and biphobia.

I’ll start with the heartbreaking fact that Evelyn learned that her body was a currency when she was only 13 years old with the 16-year-old cashier at her nearby five-and-dime store. She learned her body was something men wanted and that she could use it to get what she wanted.

And before you call her a whore for “sleeping her way to the top,” make sure to question the many men who used their power to receive sexual favors from her.

I didn’t want him to kiss me. I pushed him away. But he held onto my arm.

“Oh, come on,” he said.

The store was empty. His arms were strong. He grasped me tighter. And in that moment, I knew he was going to get what he wanted me whether I let him or not.

So I had two choices. I could do it for free. Or I could do it for free candy.

For the next three months, I took anything I wanted from that five-and-dime. And in exchange, I saw him every Saturday night and let him take my shirt off. I never felt I had much choice in the matter. Being wanted meant having to satisfy. At least that was my view of it back then.

I remember him saying... “You have this power over me.”

He‘d convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault.

And I believed him.

Look what I do to these poor boys, I thought. And yet also, here is my value, my power (ch. 6, p. 43).

Evelyn had a pretty twisted self image. It changed throughout her life, what she thought of herself, what she thought her value was, but it was hard for her. She knew a lot of people liked her for her body and I think it made it difficult to imagine anyone genuinely liking any other part of her.

She grew a lot by the time Monique sat down with her at age 86.

"There’s a difference between sexuality and sex. I used sex to get what I wanted. Sex and just an act. Sexuality is a sincere expression of desire and pleasure” (270-271).

She pitied the young version of herself who saw her body as a burden and a tool as opposed to something to love.

Chapter 13 and 16 and “Cold, Cold Evelyn”

The following scene touches on three important issues that come up throughout the book: domestic abuse and how victims deal with it, the way we criticize women for being women, and how fake celebrities are. It’s a range, I know. It starts in chapter 13.

I didn’t keep a neat house…

[Our maid] Paula had her work cut out for her, and she didn’t find me particularly charming. That much was clear.

“Can you do that later?” I said to her. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m in a rush to get to set.”

She smiled politely and left.

I wasn’t in a rush, really. I just wanted to get dressed, and I wasn’t going to do that in front of Paula. I didn’t want her to see that there was a bruise, dark purple and yellowing, on my ribs.

Don had pushed me down the stairs nine days before. Even as I say it all these years later, I feel the need to defend him. To say that it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. That we were toward the bottom of the stairs, and he gave me a shove that bumped me down about four steps and onto the floor.

Unfortunately, the table by the door, where we kept the keys and the mail, is what caught my fall. I landed on it on my rib cage.

When I said I thought I might have broken a rib, Don said, “Oh, no, honey. Are you all right?” as if he wasn’t the one who pushed me.

Like an idiot, I said, “I’m fine.”

The bruise wasn’t going away quickly.

Paula burst back in through the door a moment later.

“Sorry, Mrs. Adler, I forgot the-”

I panicked. “For heaven’s sake, Paula! I asked you to leave.”

She turned around and walked out. And what pissed me off more than anything was that if she was going to sell a story, why wasn’t it that one? Why didn’t she tell the world Don Adler was beating his wife? Why, instead, did she come after me? (85-86).

An article from the (fake) Sub Rosa (99)

The last thing I needed was America not wanting to see my movies because I wouldn’t give Don a baby. I knew, of course, that most moviegoers would never say as much. They might not even realize they *thought* as much. But they would read something like this, and the next time one of my pictures came out, they’d thing to themselves that there was something about me they never liked, they just couldn’t put their finger on it.

People don’t find it very sympathetic or endearing, a woman putting herself first. Nor do people respect a man who can’t keep his wife in line. So it didn’t look good for Don, either (ch. 16, p. 102).

Don physically abused Evelyn for the entire duration of their marriage. Evelyn talks about how the first time he hit her was a surprise and she thought it was the last. She talked about the excuses she made for the both of them. She talked about the reasons she didn’t leave right away and about the reasons she stayed for so long.

There’s a conversation later, in chapter 33, between Evelyn and Ruby when Evelyn needs a favor that shows another level of her experience. A different kind of regret. In the margins of the book, when I first read it, I wrote “that might be the worst kind of regret, [and] the hardest to swallow” under this scene.

“Honey, Don pursued me.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“The least you could have done was warn me,” she said.

"You knew what he was doing behind my back,” I said. “What made you think he’d be any different with you?”

Not the cheating, Ev,” she said.

That’s when I realized he’d hit her, too (216-217).

And as we hung up, I thought, If I’d told people what he was doing to me, he might not have had the chance to do it to her.

I wasn’t much interested in keeping a log of the victims of my decisions, but it did occur to me that if I was, I’d have had to put Ruby Reilly on the list (218).

I write more about Evelyn’s feelings for Don when I talk about Lover. The only thing I want to add here is that Evelyn admitted she still loved Don after the abuse started, after it got bad, after they got divorced. She didn’t love him every minute, she didn’t always like him, she hated him in a million ways. But, he was still one of her only people she married who she ever loved. I think that says a lot about her, not Don. She was happy to leave him, thankful she did, and yet… he always had a place in her heart. No one marries an abusive person, no one enters a relationship if they think it’s going to end that way. She married a man she loved, someone who made her feel good, someone she cared about who cared about her.

When Harry asked her if she was happy, if she thought Don would take good care of her, she told him she had “no doubt about it,” but he started hitting her two months after their wedding. I think Reid expressed the complexity in that well.

In this scene alone, on top of talking about domestic abuse, Reid lays out the misogyny bare. Reading it made me think of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Billboard’s “Woman of the Decade” award (15:16, the full transcript from Billboard here) when she said, “And now I realize that this is just what happens to a woman in music if she achieves success or power beyond people’s comfort level or have you ever heard someone say about a male artist ‘there’s just something about him I don’t like?’ That criticism is reserved for us!”

Like Evelyn said, it’s a feeling.

Sometimes it is more obvious than others, like in chapter 46 when Monique asked why Evelyn wasn't nominated for an Oscar for one of her most successful films and her male counterpart won one.

“Because!” Evelyn says, frustrated. “Because I wasn’t allowed to be applauded for it. It had an X rating. It was responsible for letters to the editor at nearly every paper across the country. It was too scandalous, too explicit. It got people excited and when they felt that way, they had to blame someone, and they blamed me. What else were they going to do? Blame the French director? The French are like that. And they weren't’ going to blame the newly redeemed Don Adler. They blamed the sexpot they’d created whom they could now call a tramp. They weren’t going to give me an Oscar for that. They were going to watch it alone in a dark theater and then chastise me in public” (269).

The hypocrisy is everywhere.

“The naked female body is treated so weirdly in society. It’s like people are constantly begging to see it, but once they do, someone’s a hoe,” (@sharkiraevanss, Twitter).

Or as John Berger put it in Ways of Seeing, “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you call the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.”

I don’t know how else to stress the importance of this.

Seven Times

Here is one or two things Evelyn said about each of her husbands that I think summarizes them appropriately.

1. Poor Ernie Diaz (chapter 6)

He wasn’t a bad looking guy, but he also wasn’t particularly book-smart or charming. He wasn’t going to get many chances to marry a beautiful girl. I think he knew that. I think he knew enough to grab the chance when it swung his way (ch. 6, p. 45).

2. Goddamn Don Adler (chapter 8) - at their wedding.

Don was expected to play the game exactly the way his parents wanted it. Even then I could tell he was eager to get out of their shadow, to eclipse their stardom with his own. Don had been raised to believe that fame was the only power worth pursuing, and what I loved about him was that he was ready to become the more powerful person in any room by becoming the most adored (ch. 10).

3. Gullible Mick Riva (chapter 24)

When he gets up off the bed and grabs his jacket, you realize there’s an element of this that you hadn’t accounted for. He likes to reject. He likes to condescend. When he was calculating his moves last night, he was thinking of this moment, too. This moment where he gets to leave you (ch. 28, p. 180).

4. Clever Rex North (chapter 31)

There is a certain freedom in marrying a man when you aren’t hiding anything.

Celia was gone. I wasn’t really at a place in my life where I could fall in love with

anyone, and Rex wasn’t the type of man who seemed capable of falling in love at all. Maybe, if we’d met at different times in our lives, we might have hit it off. But with things as they were, Rex and I had a relationship built entirely on box office.

It was tacky and fake and manipulative.

But it was the beginning of my millions.

It was also how I got Celia to come back to me..

And it was one of the most honest dealings I’ve ever made with anybody,

I think I will always love Rex North a little bit because of all that (ch. 31, pg. 196).

“I can’t say for sure I’d never sleep with you,” I said. It was the truth. “You’re handsome. I could see myself falling for your shtick ones or twice.”

Rex laughed. He always had a detached sense about him, like you could do whatever you wanted and you wouldn’t get under his skin. He was untouchable in that way.

“I mean, can you say for certain you’d never fall in love with me” I asked. “What if you end up wanting to make this a real marriage. That would be uncomfortable for everyone.”

“You know, if any woman could do it, it would make sense that it was Evelyn Hugo. I suppose there is always a chance.”

“That’s how I feel about sleeping with you,” I said. “There’s always a chance” (ch. 31, p. 197).

5. Brilliant, Kind Hearted, Tortured Harry Cameron (chapter 36) - Monique opened their first session with everyone's biggest question: “who was the love of your life? Harry Cameron?”

Evelyn thinks and then answers slowly. “Not in the way you mean, no.”

“In what way then?”

“Harry was my greatest friend. He invented me. He was the person who loved me the most unconditionally. The person I loved the most purely, I think. Other than my daughter. But no, he was not the love of my life,” (ch. 4).

It was around that time that I started to believe that friendships could be written in the stars. “If there are all different types of soul mates,” I told harry on afternoon, when the two of us were sitting out on the patio with Connor. “Then you are one of mine” (ch. 41, p. 249).

6. Disappointing Max Girard (chapter 52)

It took me about four months to realize that Max had no intention of loving even trying to love me, that he was only capable of loving the idea of me. And then, after that, it seems so silly to say it, but I didn’t want to leave him because I didn’t want to get divorced.

I’d only married a man I loved once before. This was only the second time in my life I had gone into a marriage believing it could last. And after all, I hadn’t left Don. Don had left me.

With Max, I thought that something might change, something might click, something might make him see me as I truly was and love me for it. I thought maybe I could love the real him enough that he’d start loving the real me.

I thought I could finally have a meaningful marriage with someone.

But that never happened.

Instead, Max paraded me around town like the trophy I was. Everyone wanted Evelyn Hugo, and Evelyn Hugo wanted him.

That girl in Boute-en-Train mesmerized everybody. Even the man who created her. And I didn’t know how to tell him that I loved her, too. But I wasn’t her (ch. 52, p. 298).

7. Agreeable Robert Jamison (chapter 59)

“Robert always claimed that he married me because he would do anything for Celia. But I think he did, at least in some small part, because it gave him a chance to have a family… this family was one he could be a part of, and I think he knew that when he signed up” (ch. 59, p. 344).

And finally, my own unofficial addition: #8. My Heart, Celia

There’s the coded messages they left for each other in their speeches when they each won the Oscars different years. There’s the way they came back together again and again, knowing it would hurt, still believing it worth it a hundred times over. There's their wedding in bed when Celia was sick and Evelyn’s vows, “I have been married seven times, and never once has it felt half as right as this. I think that loving you is the truest thing about me” (ch. 59, p. 349).

It’s not the perfect love story. They spent years apart and realized too late they should’ve spent every one together. They were both stubborn and unyielding at times. Celia was jealous of Evelyn's different relationships with men. Evelyn wasn’t ready to give up her fame and money for Celia for a long time. But, they overcame all of it and they cherished every moment they had together until Celia died. She was Evelyn’s great love. “I feel like I spent my entire life loving her” (ch. 19, p. 123).

Their story was tragic, in many ways, heart breaking, for sure. Fictional gay love stories have to be, you know (ha). That's what I appreciated about Evelyn and Celia's relationship. They weren't a tragedy. They loved each other purely and impurely, wonderfully and cruelly. Love stories are never "perfect." Heterosexual couples get complicated. Queer couples get shame, fear, and death. I don't see enough gay couples with a happy ending, however bitter sweet. I know I'm not the only queer reader who needed to see it.

That isn't to say it was smooth sailing in the closet they shared for many years. Celia was a lesbian and was comfortable in her identity. Evelyn had a harder time being bisexual for different reasons. One was that society was only beginning to be tolerant of queer people towards the end of her life, after the men and woman she loved had died.

“So this book, your biography… you’re ready to come out as a gay woman?” [Monique asks].

Evelyn closes her eyes for a moment, and at first I think she is processing the weight of what I’ve said, but once she opens her eyes again, I realize she is trying to process my stupidity.

"Haven’t you been listening to a single thing I’ve told you? I loved Celia, but I also, before her, loved Don... I’m bisexual. Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box, Monique. Don’t do that” (ch. 19, p. 123).

There were also more personal reasons for her wariness.

"... Celia only saw things in black and white. She liked women and only women. And I liked her. And so she often denied the rest of me.

She liked to ignore the fact that I had truly loved Don Adler once. She liked to ignore the fact that I had made love to men and enjoyed it. She liked to ignore it until the very moment she decided to be threatened by it. That seemed to be her pattern. I was a lesbian when she loved me and a straight woman when she hated me” (ch. 27, p. 238).

Biphobia is a real problem people still struggle with today. As someone who is pansexual, I know I've heard my fair share of it. Celia was ignorant at times and her beliefs on the issue seem to center around jealously, but it didn't start with Evelyn.

The Ending

After all of this, there are still things I feel I haven’t touched. The parallels between Evelyn’s past and Monique’s present. How Evelyn tried to let go of her Cuban heritage how she changed her name, dyed her hair blonde, and pretended she didn’t speak Spanish. How Monique grew as a person, how Evelyn was part of the reason she didn’t go back to her ex-husband. Evelyn taught us both so much. This book got my cold heart beating again, tore it to pieces, and put it back together again. Especially the ending. The ending! Oh, the ending. My thoughts on the ending: *screams*

This is what I texted my friend immediately after finishing the book.

I still have so many questions!

Did Evelyn die married? The whole book revolves around her marriages. So, did she die married to Robert or Celia or no one? Some widows consider themselves still married after their partners pass. Did Evelyn? Did she care?

What did Connor think of her mom? Evelyn talks about her troubling to connect with her when she was a teenager- did that change? What was it like to have Evelyn, Harry, Celia, John, and Robert as parents? What was it like to have a mom as famous as Evelyn Hugo?

At the beginning of the book, Evelyn says “Everyone I loved is dead now. There’s no one left to protect. No one left to lie for but me" (ch. 5, p. 38). But Monica and Angela were still alive. Evelyn gave Monique the choice to stay out of it, to keep her family’s secret, but she couldn’t turn back time. So, there lies my biggest question: Was the whole book Evelyn's attempt to apologize to Monique? Was it enough? Monique didn’t seem to need an apology from Evelyn, not in the end. It was clear Evelyn was haunted by her decision to frame a dead man for drunk driving. I don’t think she saw a point.in trying to press any more guilt into the old woman. What was done was done. All Evelyn could do was tell the truth.

If you were Monique, would you have written Evelyn’s book? If not, when would you have walked away?

I, myself, am not one to turn down a story.