We enjoyed another beautiful summer morning in July reviewing "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The general consensus was we all enjoyed reading about Evelyn’s husbands and her life story. The book is loosely based on actresses Elizabeth Taylor, who was married eight times to seven different men, and Ava Gardner, who revealed the secrets of her life to a journalist which was eventually published as well as Brockman Bankhead and Rita Haywood. The novel was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction of 2017.
The general plot is based on an unknown magazine reporter, Monique Grant, who is hired to tell the life story about an aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon, Evelyn Hugo. The book is a behind the scenes look at the lives of glamorous celebrity couples and it touches on issues of sexuality, race and what it meant to be a strong woman back in a time where women didn’t have a lot of opportunities. Evelyn was ambitious and she manipulated the news media in order to bring her career into the limelight. The plot had some interesting twists as we find out that Evelyn’s deep love of her life is actually for a woman, Celia. None of us predicted that Monique’s connection to Evelyn was her father’s death in a car crash where Evelyn switches the bodies to avoid a scandal about her 5th husband, Harry Cameron.
Our group gave the book an average rating of 3.3 with a low of 3 and a high of 4.
The next meeting is August 10th at 9:30 am and we are reading “The Radium Girls” by Kate Moore.
