*SPOILER ALERT*
Seven husbands but the love of Evelyn's life is a woman. That sentence says it all, doesn't it? Sorry for the spoil but that sentence has been lingering on my mind for 2 days now. It's good to get it out.
I love the theme of the book, old Hollywood full of fame and scandal, the kind of life I grow up dreaming about. It's glamorous and also brutal and painful.
When I say that this book will change your life, I mean it. This book is marketed as a historical romance in which you will learn about a fictional, well-known old Hollywood actress and her seven marriages. But what you get is a novel about a bisexual Cuban woman who was never permitted to speak about her one true love, her wife.
Aside from being a powerful book about racism, sexuality, misogyny, and having to conform to society's conventions, the underlying meaning I derived from this book is that life is short, and we shouldn't waste it pretending to be someone we aren't. And we shouldn't waste it on anything other than loving those who are deserving of our affection.
Evelyn's unapologetic about her actions, and it's one of the most empowering things I've ever read. She has a far larger range of roles in life than the ones she gets cast in the movies. Evelyn, on the other hand, rapidly learns how to play each and every man she is compelled to engage with, as well as what she may gain from each of them. She seems so real, the way they created her. The old version is full of wisdom and life experience, the kind of person who is tired of living a long dreadful life and can't wait to die. Evelyn reminds me of three actresses and I think she is based on them too: Elizabeth Taylor (married 8 times, two times to the same man and the first marriage was also in her teen), Rita Hayworth (dyed her hair blonde to conceal her Latin root), and Marilyn Monroe (a sex icon at her time).
Evelyn Hugo's Seven Husbands is the embodiment of what a wonderful found family may be. The friendship between Evelyn and Harry in this book was one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. And what about the romance? The true romance in this novel smoulderingly ached inside my chest for days after I finished it, the type that makes your eyes water just thinking about it and embraces how the writer chooses to write it that way.
How many Evelyn and Celia are out there in the world? How many people are still forced to play the part Evelyn was forced to play? I weep for everyone who is forced to disguise who they are and who they wish to love. And while this book covers a lot of ground in LGBT history, from the Stonewall riots to the despicable Reagan era, life is still far from equal in 2022. The prejudices, discrimination, virus/syndrome blaming, and the looks people give when someone holds their same-sex partner's hand walking down the street?
This novel also places a strong emphasis on parenting throughout the entire book, and I started sobbing all over again as I read the acknowledgment. Taylor Jenkins Reid was able to elicit the most powerful feelings from me, and I only hope that things will be different for the current generation of children.
The title of the book is a true masterpiece of its own. Seven Husbands, what comes to your mind first when you heard that? What a slut or what's wrong with her? Yeah, almost that's how everyone would react. But the title, the damn title summarizes the book perfectly. It's how the media and the world viewed her. But that is what exactly Evelyn did to protect her true self and the love of her life by bringing attention to her for having so many husbands rather than being boycotted or imprisoned for being a gay woman in her time. Behind the seven husbands is one wife, only one. The true star of the show isn't the 7 husbands in the title but the one wife that they (the husbands) tried to mask.
Beautiful. Just brilliant. Love it. Absolutely love it.
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