“Doesn’t it bother you? That your husbands have become such a headline story, so often mentioned, that they have nearly eclipsed your work and yourself? That all anyone talks about when they talk about you are the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo?”
“No,” she told me. “Because they are just husbands. I am Evelyn Hugo.”
The quote, said by Evelyn Hugo to the young journalist Monique Grant, is not just a quote. It’s a warning. A reminder that telling stories comes with a price, power and consequences.
Released in 2017, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a novel that blends drama, celebrity gossip and social criticism in just the right doses. The story revolves around Evelyn Hugo, a legendary Hollywood actress who, at 79 years old, finally decides to tell the truth about her life — a journey marked by seven marriages and a great hidden love. To tell her story, she chooses the journalist Monique Grant to write her biography.
Looking closely, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is much more than a narrative about Hollywood glamour: it is a deep reflection on journalism, truth and the silences we choose to sustain.
The power of an exclusive story
Monique Grant is neither famous or experienced. Even so, she is personally chosen by Evelyn Hugo to write her highly anticipated profile for a magazine, and later, her biography. A seductive invitation, impossible to refuse, but one that carries a subtle trap: the more fascinating the source, the greater the risk that the journalist will get lost in the seduction of the story.
Evelyn is charming, manipulative and, at the same time, brutally honest. This confuses Monique and the readers. The book challenges us: is it possible to maintain critical distance when the interviewer controls all the rules of the game?
Monique & ghostwriting
As she dips into Evelyn’s life, Monique stops being just a reporter looking for a scoop. The actress wants her story to be written with impact and she wants Monique to be the one to translate it into words.
In this case, ghostwriting is not just a technical function, it’s an act of trust and responsibility. Monique becomes a bridge between Evelyn and the world, assuming a voice that is not hers, but one that she starts to inhabit. An ethical conflict arises: to what extent is she telling Evelyn’s story and where does her own begin to take over?
This relationship exposes how journalism, when it steps into the territory of intimate listening and biographical writing, flirts with the boundaries between authorship, identity and empathy. For Monique, being Evelyn Hugo’s ghostwriter was not about disappearing. It was, in fact, about being seen for the first time.
The construction of a narrative
Evelyn Hugo chooses what to tell, that’s the key. Even when she bares herself before Monique, she maintains full control over what is said, what is omitted and what is revealed last.
The very structure of the book is an edited interview where there are moments of tension, bombshell revelations and emotional twists. This isn’t a mistake, it’s a critique. Evelyn’s public life was built on headlines, magazine covers and rumors. But her truest truth only appears when she chooses to take ownership of her own narrative, with all the contradictions that this involves.
The process of journalism
In the end, Monique doesn’t just publish a story. She’s transformed by it. She enters the interview as someone trying to save her career and leaves as a woman forced to confront deep personal questions about identity, anger, forgiveness.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo shows that journalism is not just about what ends up on paper. The research, the listening and the confrontation with the truth of others; all of that transforms the journalist, inside and out.
It is at this point that the book distances itself from any sense of glamour and draws closer to real life – because every journalist, deep down, is a bit like Monique:carrying stories that aren’t theirs but end up truly shaping who they are.
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The article above was edited by Isabella Messias.
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