A Quick Note On This Review: This article includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org as a way of supporting both local bookshops and my own ability to write.
Monique Grant is a reporter struggling with her career when she gets a call from the assistant of famed Hollywood actress, Evelyn Hugo. Hugo is a renowned business woman as well as Hollywood starlet, but incredibly private with her personal life until she sits down with Monique to discuss a proposition: Hugo will share her life’s story for a memoir about Hugo’s life to which Monique has the sole rights to. As Monique listens to Hugo tell the story of her seven marriages and secret loves, she finds herself wondering why Hugo has made such a generous gift to Monique, and what secrets may be revealed when Hugo finishes her story.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Read had been around for a few years before I decided to give it a chance on the basis that the premise didn’t feel like something that fit inside my typical literary wheelhouse. Instead, Read’s novel justified it’s acclaim beautifully in the story of Evelyn Hugo’s life, which was simultaneously rich with characters and struggles that people face everyday and extraordinary for the way Read is able to convey these details in a fashion that makes them seem unremarkable and believable.
Read does a wonderful job of creating a solid plot idea and pacing it in a way that keeps the audience engaged, but what’s most striking about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo isn’t so much the plot itself – though being married seven times is remarkable, as is the story Hugo narrates – but the structure of the novel as it intertwines two lives that have no reasonable expectation of being connected. While Monique believes she’s hearing a story that will give her a financial boost and the reader gets glimpses of her life outside of Hugo’s memoir, it’s never entirely clear why Hugo has chosen Monique to write her story until the novel is practically done, at which point the revelation snaps into place the reasoning behind specific secrets Hugo had kept to that point. Read’s novel therefore has a similar feeling to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, even if the stakes aren’t nearly the same as they are in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
For casual readers, Read’s novel would be ideal for those who enjoy love stories with tight plotting and compelling characters. The premise of the book requires a trip through the early days of the movie industry, which makes the book attractive for anyone who has an interest in stories that deal with topics like those. If a reader enjoys The Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, then they might also likely enjoy The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo if the primary interest lay in the aspects of the books that dealt with the early days of Hollywood and LGBTQ themes, but it should be noted that there is more to both books have significantly more to them than those two topics.
For writers, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo offers a crash course in working with split plotlines effectively. Read’s ability to structure a novel in the way she structures this one without diluting its impact or losing the reader in meandering back story is a skill that novelists of every stripe would likely benefit from. It should also be noted that the understated way that Read deals with love in the context of this novel would be something worth emulating for anyone that wants to incorporate romance – LGBTQ+ or otherwise – into a story without it being the primary focus.
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What’s Next?
I am an avid reader and have quite a few thoughts on how some books could benefit both people that want to be entertained and those looking to sharpen their literary skills.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve been reading – and how it could benefit you – I will be publishing those thoughts on Fridays on a weekly basis. Check back next week for a discussion of Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors!
The Writerly Review 