Literature / The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Fame and fortune always comes with a price.

"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."

Monique Grant has been wallowing in obscurity ever since she graduated from college. While working for the magazine Vivant helps pay the bills, it hasn't helped Monique make a name for herself in the journalism industry. Then, one fateful day, she's given the chance to interview the incredibly private Old Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo about her upcoming charity auction. The catch is that Evelyn wants be interviewed by Monique and only Monique.

Though puzzled by Evelyn's insistence, Monique knows that this opportunity is far too good to pass up. However, once she's actually sitting in front of Evelyn, the former actress confuses Monique when she swiftly reveals that she lied about her intentions. What Evelyn really wants to do is tell Monique her life's story and have Monique turn it into a biography, to be published after Evelyn dies.

Much like every other celebrity, Evelyn's life is a complex mixture of truth and lies. In terms of Evelyn's private life, the only true thing the public knows about her is that she was married seven times to seven different men. What they don't know are the circumstances behind the marriages nor of the woman beneath the carefully constructed persona of Evelyn Hugo.

What follows is a story about a life driven by one goal, the lengths to which one woman took to achieve it, and the loved ones she hurt to keep it.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a 2017 historical fiction novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novel switches perspectives between Monique and Evelyn, being split into seven sections after the first five chapters. Each section is named after the husband Evelyn is married to during that period of her life, detailing where she was at both personally and professionally.

In 2019, it was announced that a live-action series adaptation by Freeform was in the works.

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This novel provides examples of:

• The Alcoholic:
  • After the death of his lover, Harry turned to alcohol in order to get through each day. The only thing that kept him from completely drowning in it was his producing work and his then five-year-old daughter. His death was a result of driving while drunk; he had crashed his car into a tree, instantly killing his then boyfriend, James Grant, and severely wounding himself. Evelyn found the crash and had Harry taken to the hospital where he would ultimately die of his injuries.
  • Harry's sudden death affected Connor badly enough that she started taking up booze and drugs in order to cope with the pain. She was only fourteen at the time and nothing Evelyn did seemed to help her daughter. Evelyn decided that getting Connor out of New York was the best option, so she took Connor with her when she, Celia, and Robert moved to Aldiz, Spain. This proved to be just the thing Connor needed.
• The Beard:
  • Evelyn's quickie marriage to Mick Riva was planned by Evelyn in order to disguise her and Celia's relationship; the press was cottoning on to the fact that she and Celia were lovers, which would've hurt both of their careers and reputations.
  • Evelyn's longest marriage was with Harry Cameron so she could be the beard for his relationship with John Braverman, and Harry could be the beard for her relationship with Celia. Evelyn lampshades this in her narration:
    "Two men sleeping together. Married to two women sleeping together. We were four beards."
  • Evelyn's marriage to Robert Jamison was suggested by Celia, Robert's sister. Celia wasn't given much longer to live, and she wanted to ensure that Evelyn would get legal authority over her estate upon her death. Robert was amenable and proved himself to be a lovely husband and stepfather.
• Death by Irony: Evelyn was diagnosed with malignant breast cancer some time before she had Monique interview her. Since the start of Evelyn's career in Hollywood, she used her body- especially her breasts- to climb her way up to stardom and keep herself on top. After Monique learns about Evelyn's diagnoses, the irony of the situation isn't lost on her.
  "[Evelyn's] dress is low-cut, revealing her still-ample cleavage, and it occurs to me that it is the very thing that made her that will be the thing to finally take her down."
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Evelyn is a Cuban-American who began her actressing career in 50s America, a time period in which roles for POC actors were severly limited, such as being routinely casted as servants. While Evelyn has light skin, she still had to dye her hair blonde and use a different last name (Hugo instead of Diaz) to seem less ethnic and thus get roles traditionally given to white actors, such as leading roles.
• Differing Priorities Breakup: Evelyn is ambitious and thirsty for fame and glory. Celia is easily jealous and desires a normal life with Evelyn. This creates tension in their relationship, and is a major reason why the two of them break up at different points in their lives.
• Domestic Abuser: Don Adler started abusing Evelyn two months into their marriage. Ruby Reilly, his second wife, confirmed that he abused her too.
• Double Date: Evelyn and Harry Cameron and Celia and John Braverman often went on double dates, so much so that the press nicknamed them "America's Favorite Double Daters".
• Driving Question: There are two questions brought up in the novel's introductory chapters: "which of Evelyn's husbands was the love of her life?" and "why was Evelyn so insistent about having Monique interview her?". The first question gets answered fairly quickly while the second one isn't answered until the tail end of the novel.
• Everyone's in the Loop: The "affairs" Evelyn and Rex had during their marriage were mutually planned. Their "affair" partners were in on the plan as well. A similar setup was done with Evelyn's marriages to Harry Cameron and Robert Jamieson, both of which were used to hide her relationship with Celia.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Evelyn's marriage to Mick Riva lasted for only one night. She carefully planned the whole thing to play out that way so she would get the press off of her and Celia's backs while not permanently tying herself down to another man.
• Face Death with Dignity: By the time Monique enters the picture, Evelyn's lived a long life and all of her loved ones are dead. She also had to watch her daughter battle against and ultimately succumb to breast cancer, the same illness she was recently diagnosed with. Evelyn doesn't want to die like her daughter did, which informs her decision to take her own life.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Evelyn is regarded as one of the most famous actresses of all time.
  • Except for Ernie and Robert, most of Evelyn's husbands are prominent names in the entertainment industry: Don was A-list actor when they first got married, Mick was a well-loved singer, Rex another actor, Harry a producer, and Max a French director.
• Fictional Document: Scattered throughout the novel are clippings and posts from in-universe magazines, newspapers and websites. These excerpts show the reader what the public perception was of Evelyn at that point in her life.
• Framing Device: Monique's interview of Evelyn frames the actress's telling of her life's story.
• Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Evelyn is not happy to discover that Don Adler has affairs. On the other hand, Evelyn exclusively sleeps with married men in her marriage with Rex North, since they're the one's to keep quiet about it.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. The "one night marriage" with Mick Riva results in a pregnancy. Evelyn has Harry drive her to Tijuana, Mexico in order to get an abortion. While she never regrets that decision, she does regret the events that led up to it and how the pregnancy tore her relationship with Celia apart.
• Immoral Journalist:
  • Downplayed by tabloids like Sub Rosa, The Hollywood Digest, and Photomoment. Their pieces about Evelyn mostly fuel rumors and push double standards, but they aren't actively ruining her life or doing anything illegal.
  • Averted with Monique, who is a journalist who is decidedly not immoral.
• Interrupted Suicide: Subverted. Monique realizes that Evelyn intends to commit suicide after their interview is finished, but decides not to stop her as she knows Evelyn is suffering from breast cancer. Monique also previously advocated for euthanasia, so she understands why Evelyn would prefer to die by her own hand than waste away.
• It's Not You, It's Me: When Mick doesn't get the wild night of sex he assumed he'd be getting with Evelyn, he wants to get an annulment, saying the same thing to her that he said to the press about his previous wife: that a bad guy like him doesn't deserve a girl like her, and vise versa.
• Latino Is Brown: Evelyn is Cuban with light brown skin and brown hair. She is able to pass as an Anglo woman by dyeing her hair blonde and advances her career by getting "white" parts this way.
• Making the Choice for You: When the tabloids start catching on to the fact that Evelyn and Celia might be more than just friends, Evelyn makes the decision to seduce Mick Riva, a popular singer at the time who had shown interest in her. Celia is wholly against it, but Evelyn doesn't back down, pointing out the danger, not just to themselves, but to Harry as well should their secret relationship become known. Celia winds up accepting Evelyn's choice on the condition that they move in together.
• Manipulative Bastard: Evelyn knows she's a manipulator and uses this skill to her full advantage to get what she wants. She outright states that this is the difference between her and Celia: Evelyn knows how to use people and is willing to go to great lengths to manipulate them into doing what she wants. This is how she tricks Mick Riva into marrying and divorcing her in one night while making both events look like they were his idea. The chapter itself resembles an instructional guide thanks to using second person pronouns, laying her plan out step by step.
• No Bisexuals: Subverted. Evelyn has only ever fallen in love twice: the first time to Don Adler, her first husband who turned out to have an abusive streak, and again with Celia St. James. One of the points of contention in her and Celia's relationship was that Celia couldn't accept the fact that Evelyn was attracted to both men and women. (It took Celia until the last years of her life to finally make peace with it.) Evelyn herself has never been comfortable enough to talk about her romance with Celia until she meets Monique, who gives her the space to admit that she loved Celia. And when Monique makes the mistake of referring to her as a gay woman, Evelyn explicitly calls herself bisexual.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Some details of Evelyn's life seem to be taken from the actual lives of at least five other famous actresses:
  • Much like Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn married an older man as a teenager to gain independence, and she had to conceal her ethnic background to avoid being typecast into "exotic foreigner" roles like Rita Hayworth (Hayworth had to hide her Spanish heritage and Evelyn her Cuban one). Both Monroe and Hayworth were sex symbols during their hayday, something that Evelyn also shares.
  • Evelyn having been married seven times is similiar to the amount of times Elizabeth Taylor was married (Evelyn seven times, Taylor a total of eight, twice to the same man).
  • Evelyn's true purpose of having the journalist Monique write her biography and publish it once she is dead is similiar to Ava Gardner, who also told a journalist her secrets and requested that a book about her life be published after her own death.
  • Evelyn starring as Jo in an adaptation of Little Women supplants Katharine Hepburn's portrayal of the same role in the same film.
• One True Love: For the first third of the novel, the Driving Question is who, out of all her husbands, was Evelyn's greatest love? The answer was none of them: the love of Evelyn's life was Celia St. James, her longtime "rival" and secret lover. It isn't until her interview with Monique that Evelyn finally feels comfortable coming out to someone about Celia, and the fact that she herself is bisexual.
• Opportunistic Bastard: While in a cab, Evelyn spots a car that crashed into a tree. When she finds out that the driver was her then husband Harry and that the man in the passenger's seat was most likely his male lover, Evelyn enlists the help of Nick, the cab driver, to cover up the accident by making it look like the driver was actually the lover. The next morning, Nick asks Evelyn to help him become a star in exchange for his silence.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Evelyn and Harry have known each other since the beginning of her acting career. He had a helping hand in turning her into the movie star she's always wanted to be, and the two of them form a close friendship. He becomes her fifth husband, and they enjoy a long and happy marriage, even having a daughter together.
• Poor Communication Kills: Generally one of the biggest issues in Evelyn and Celia's relationship is the fact that they don't communicate with each other as well as they should, often making assumptions or taking actions before consulting one another.
  • Celia agrees with Evelyn's plan to marry Mick Riva to distract the press from their romantic relationship. However, Celia did not realize that Evelyn had to consummate the marriage and Evelyn didn't explicitly say so since she figured that Celia would've picked up on the implication. When Evelyn reveals that she's pregnant with Mick's baby, Celia reacts so badly that it causes the women to break up and not speak to one another for five years.
  • Evelyn shoots a sex scene with her former husband Don Adler but doesn't consult Celia before doing so, taking an "act first, ask for forgiveness later" approach. When she admits what she did, Celia leaves her again, initiating another years long string of silence between the two.
• Second Love:
  • After her first husband, Don Adler, proves himself to be abusive, Evelyn finds herself falling out of love with him and in love with Celia St. James.
  • John's death left Harry incredibly depressed, making him think he would never love again. He eventually did find love once more with Monique's father, James Grant.
• Secret Relationship: Due to living in an overtly homophobic era, Evelyn has to keep her relationship with Celia- and Harry his relationship to John Braverman- under wraps, or else all of the lives they've carefully built for themselves would come crashing down.
• Serial Spouse: Evelyn had seven husbands. The only one Evelyn didn't divorce was her last one, Robert Jamison, and that was because Celia explicitly wanted Evelyn to have control over her estate. Said husband was Celia's older brother, and one of the few who knew of Evelyn and Celia's relationship.
• The 'Verse: The three novels after Seven Husbands include the slightly altered Hollywood of this book.
  • Daisy Jones in Daisy Jones & The Six attends a wild party that Evelyn's ex-third husband, Mick Riva, is hosting. He gets a tiny cameo in which he's seen smooching a couple of underage girls while he himself is at least forty.
  • Malibu Rising is directly about Mick's kids from a different marriage and Mick himself appears several times throughout the book. Celia St. James and Don Adler are explicitly mentioned, and the magazines Vivant and Sub Rosa are also name dropped. Evelyn Hugo herself is also referenced a few times via her very brief marriage to Mick.
  • Carrie Soto Is Back has a character mention Mick and one of his children.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • When Evelyn and Celia get back together for the last time, Celia reveals that she has COPD, a progressive lung disease, and has been given ten years (if that) to live.
  • Evelyn herself is in the early stages of breast cancer by the time she meets Monique. Rather than endure the torture her daughter went through trying to survive, she elects to commit suicide instead.

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