# books / The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo -- Taylor Jenkins Reid

Review

In recent years only one book has seriously passed my abidance for modern style. Where the Crawdads Sing borrowed from nature for its whispery elegance.

The contemporary style, “write as casually as a low vocabulary GCSE student Whatsapps”, fit as many “you and I both know”s and “I never thought it was possible to love someone this much”s onto the page as possible. “Tell me don’t show me”, make characters one dimensional parodies, of a rich person, a fierce person, a confident person, and make the main character none of these things, envious of all, but secretly brilliant. That’s modern fiction and it does nothing to recommend itself to me, in general.

This is the scepticism with which I picked up Evelyn Hugo. I’d seen Daisy Jones (same author) and I was on holiday, so I lowered my guard. The first 10% of the book was exactly as I feared. The book opens with a one-dimensional description of the narrator’s boss. “Here we go” I thought. For whatever reason, I persisted.

I finished the book on that same day. I’m a slow reader, making this quite the feat. Once it got going, it gripped me.

Evelyn Hugo is not so much a story of love as of loss. Less of the achievements of stardom than its hollow regrets. If there is power, there is an impotence when it matters most. What it is to be known around the world, and yet never truly known at all.

To have unspeakable beauty and yet keep none for oneself. To be desired by men, who define themselves by their conquests, for few of those men to matter at all. To do anything to get what you want, and never get what you need most. To trade parts of yourself and to never feel whole.

And the cruel, merciless trick that is time.

The eternal reminder that to tell a person who they cannot love is not a moral act, but the crushing of a soul we don’t pause to understand.

There’s a Dorian Gray-ish element to the story too. Evelyn’s beauty has largely remained, while she pays the price for her ethical scruples, time & love lost as a result, hidden away in her Manhattan loft.

In short, I could not put it down.

This book is so moving. You will want to hold your loved ones near.

Highlights

He agreed with me. It was cold. But then he said, “Just breathe in and out five times. And when you’re done, I bet it won’t feel so cold.”

I was supposed to be both naive and erotic. It was as if I was too wholesome to understand the unwholesome thoughts you were having about me.

people would always come up to me and say, “I’m sure you don’t want to hear me blabbering on about how great you are,” and I always say, as if I’m joking, “Oh, one more time won’t hurt.” But the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.

When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “You’re safe with me”—that’s intimacy.

Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.

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 caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and could see, in no uncertain terms, that I was beautiful. But it didn’t mean anyone loved me.

When we trade any part of ourselves, we don’t get to enjoy its fruit.

“That’s because you both want the same thing. You, of all people, should know that you can’t tell a single thing about a person’s true character if you both want the same thing.

I’ve never thought of myself as a force to be reckoned with. Maybe I should start thinking of myself that way; maybe I deserve to.

I even heard rumors that the four of us were swingers, which wasn’t that crazy for that period of time. It really makes you think, doesn’t it? That people were so eager to believe we were swapping spouses but would have been scandalized to know we were monogamous and queer?

“The problem was, I used my body to get other things I wanted. And I didn’t stop doing that, even for her. That’s my tragedy. That I used my body when it was all I had, and then I kept using it even when I had other options.

Why, until this moment, did I not realize that the issue is my own confidence? That the root of most of my problems is that I need to be secure enough in who I am to tell anyone who doesn’t like it to go fuck themselves? Why have I spent so long settling for less when I know damn well the world expects more?

“Losing me again. I don’t want to let you love me if you don’t think you can lose me again. One last time.” “I can’t. Of course I can’t. But I want to anyway. I’m going to anyway. Yes,” I said finally. “I can survive it. I’d rather survive it than never feel it.”

THAT’S HOW MY STORY ENDS. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved.

No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.”

occurs to me that it is the very thing that made her that will be the thing to finally take her down.

The tragic irony that having traded on her figure, now breast cancer would be the thing that ended her life.

“You know, it’s funny. Talking about passion. Since we lost your dad, I’ve found passion with men, from time to time. But I’d give it all back for just a few more days with him. For just one more late-night talk.