The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Book Review

“She was no longer interested in pure adoration or salacious scandal. Her primary focus was on the truth.” (pg. 379) One of the last lines in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo explains that after a life of Hollywood fame and glamor, the titular Evelyn wanted to flip her public image completely. She was prepared to explain her reality to the world. Throughout the book, 50s movie star Evelyn Hugo retells her life to a young journalist who she had enlisted to write and release a biography after her death. Hugo spent the majority of her life in the spotlight, gradually marrying seven men and the love of her life, a woman, and at the age of seventy-nine, she was finally ready for the candor and controversy it took to tell her story.

Evelyn was a Cuban, bisexual woman, a rare character to be depicted, even in modern media. The out-spoken bisexual had learned with age not to shy from the term, especially after generalizations from her wife, a lesbian. Evelyn made it clear to her biographer that she despised being put into boxes and told her “Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box” (pg 127). Reid made many bold, contentious decisions with the book’s representation, especially considering that Reid is a cishet white woman.

Not only is Evelyn unapologetically queer, she is also written to be incredibly morally ambiguous. A major part of the book's plot revolves around Evelyn explaining that she doesn't find herself to be a particularly good or bad person, and she explains that she was never afraid to use people to get where she wanted. Evelyn married seven men —only two of whom she loved— in order to climb Hollywood's ladder, and never hid her willingness to use the men who objectified her for her own gain. Queer characters in media have infamously been strictly ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ so The Seven Husbands is a chance to see the complexity that is so rarely present in queer characters.

Diverse characters have recently become a larger focus of Reid’s writing, which has been both helpful and harmful. While Reid handles heavy topics with caution and nuance, she is yet another white rising figure in the literary field, and it would be very easy to center her work instead of highlighting BIPOC and queer authors. When you search for sapphic books, The Seven Husbands is one of the first to show up, and while the book does have some representation, there still isn’t much among authors. Typically, the people behind these books are white and straight, and while the books they write may change, they are still replacing people of color in writing careers.

The idea of representation from a literary viewpoint is complex and ever changing, but The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a valuable start. In a recent interview, Reid said, “But then I come back to my original point. It's very hard to parse out, even for me, the line where good intentions can turn into misrepresentation or to a loss of opportunities for people to tell their own stories.” Aside from it’s representation, the 2017 novel is simply an enjoyable, worthwhile read, and definitely food for thought.