Key themes
- The public self and the private self — and the cost of keeping them separate
- Female friendship as the deepest love
- Hollywood as a machine that turns people into images
About this book
Ageing Hollywood legend Evelyn Hugo grants her only interview to an unknown journalist — and spends it telling the real story of her life, her seven marriages and the love she kept hidden for fifty years. Reid's novel is about celebrity, the performance of identity, female friendship, bisexuality and the price of keeping secrets in a world that would have destroyed you for the truth.
Published in 2017, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo became one of the most-discussed books of the BookTok era. Reid has said she wanted to write about a woman who made calculated choices in a world that gave her limited options.
Discussion questions
- Evelyn chooses Monique as the journalist to tell her story for reasons she keeps secret. How does this structural mystery drive the novel — and does the revelation satisfy?
- Evelyn has seven husbands, all of which serve different purposes. What is Reid saying about the relationship between love, strategy and survival for a woman in the mid-20th century entertainment industry?
- The novel's most important relationship is not a marriage. How does Reid develop this central relationship — and what is she saying about the specific costs of hiding love because of the world you inhabit?
- Hollywood is presented as both glamorous and cannibalistic. How does Reid balance the seductiveness of the world she's describing with its fundamental cruelty?
- The Seven Husbands was popular for years before becoming a phenomenon on BookTok. What do you think it offers readers — and why does it spark such intense community discussion?
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