20 June 2024
Youth on Old Age: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid is an exceptionally popular 40-year-old American author from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
It was my 18-year-old daughter who tossed The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo into my lap about three months ago; at the time, I was mired in MFA craft books and had no time to read it, but I put it in my TBR pile. I probably wouldn’t have read it (I have an aversion to “popular” fiction—total snob, here) if my daughter hadn’t checked in about it at least weekly to see if I’d started yet.
Even the snob in me agrees this was a phenomenal, engaging read. In terms of craft, there is a bit of fun insofar as the reporter/biographer Monique Grant chapters are written in Grant’s first-person voice in present tense, while Evelyn Hugo’s retelling of her life is written in Hugo’s first-person voice in the past tense, and then there are snippets from tabloids peppered throughout (in present tense but with historical date stamps). The chapters are short, which kept the plot moving swiftly. And I must admit, I was in awe at the way Jenkins could so easily capture scenes critical to the advancement of the plot in such brief chapters. There is a good lesson in this.
What is most remarkable to me is Jenkins Reid’s seemingly unlimited capacity to world build within our world. None of these characters, not a single one, is a real-life character. She could so easily have tossed in a Hepburn or Grant or Peck, but she didn’t. They were each entirely unique characters built specifically to advance the plot. The same can be said of the tabloids. This is a sort of faux-Hollywood, a not-so-horrifying Upside Down. In some ways, what Jenkins Reid has done here in creating an entirely fictional Hollywood is similar to what fantasy and sci-fi authors do, creating entire new worlds—with the exception that Jenkins Reid kept the rules and geography of our universe in place. I was impressed. It’s beyond what my brain seems capable of accomplishing.
Spoiler Alert
The story was an amazing read for me, so chock full of action, until protagonists started to pass away. Obviously, though, when the main protagonist is 79, and the story is their life story, other characters will necessarily fall away. But my current headspace has me resisting the truths of time, ageing, and death. Believed me, I know this is unhealthy. I’m working on it. But the lifespans of some of these characters shuddered my foundation just a little.
It wasn’t that, though, that most captured my interest. What captured my interest was the way Jenkins portrayed Hugo’s early life in exceptionally detailed blow-by-blow moments, but that this pace tapered off after Hugo turned, like, 40? Suddenly, after 40, there were a handful of major events over the course of 5-10 years apiece, as though after 40 everything in life becomes some sort of blur. As though after 40 time runs rampant. Ok. I admit, that could have been my jaded eyes seeing what they wanted to see in the story based on my current skewed headspace.
Nevertheless, I started to wonder whether Jenkins’ representation of a 79-year-old Hugo was realistic. Is this how a 79-year-old woman would behave, believe, feel, think? Do you think she asked anyone? So often, lately, I’ve been putting myself into the shoes of an octogenarian—maybe because I just listened to an interview on YouTube between Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Dr Gabor Maté, as Maté reflects upon his 80th birthday.
I’m not saying that Jenkins’ portrayal is unrealistic; after all, I find myself marveling at the concept of fiction—because so few of us know what is “realistic” to someone else’s lived experience, who are we to even second-guess an author, at times? I’m just saying I wonder how a 79-year-old would feel about it. Would they agree?
Another spoiler here, but I was also stricken, again, probably because of my current headspace, by the bleakness of Hugo’s demise. Sure, she left a film legacy, and sure she left a fortune to certain interest groups, but she left no genetic or interpersonal legacy of any sort. There could be no close family or friends at her funeral. Everyone fucking died. God, that was a tough pill to swallow. That said, as witness to the attendance at my own Grandpa’s funeral, I do understand this happens probably more often than we realize. At least in Hugo’s case it wasn’t because she was an utter asshole. It was tragic.
All of it made me wonder about Taylor Jenkins Reid’s worldview. Neither Grant nor Hugo appeared to have any claim to any sort of faith or spirituality throughout this novel. Jenkins Reid, obviously, makes no moral claim about the way Hugo lived her life (beyond that it was so real and deeply, deeply human). It’s funny, I was in a worse headspace yesterday, when I finished reading the book, and I could see little value in Hugo’s life story. But today my headspace is less heavy; today, I can accuse Jenkins Reid less of nihilism.
I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
The truth is this: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo pulled my head out of its compulsive thoughts for three days straight, without fail, as I wait for my new SSRI to begin working. Jesus. There was perhaps not a better time for me to read this book.
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