Cliterature the Podcast
Books. Babes. Bold opinions. A queer lit podcast.
Cliterature the Podcast
The One Wife of Evelyn Hugo
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This month on Cliterture we immersed ourselves in the story of Evelyn Hugo. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid was a revisit for both of us, but boy were we happy that we read it again! Haley had forgotten all the twists and cried a million times, plus we got to dive into all of the different type of relationships that are represented in the book. All of the characters stick to your bones and leave you feeling like you truly know them. We couldn't get enough.
Thank you for listening. We're so happy you're here!
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People think that intimacy is about sex, but intimacy is about the truth. 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.
SPEAKER_01Queer lit, no chill. Some crumbs of academia, mostly chaos. If queer lit is your love language, we're fluent. Heads up, babes, we're not here to tease. We spill everything. Listener discretion is strongly encouraged, but honestly, you knew that. Welcome to Cliterature the Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Alright, we're back. Episode 11. 11. Can you believe it? We're almost at a year. I know. We've been doing this thing. I know. People are still here. They're still listening to us. Surprising. I know.
SPEAKER_01So surprising when you talk about stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03But oh, whoops, sorry, I just bashed my microphone. It's not like we've done this a few times or anything.
SPEAKER_01Listen, we're in a different setup, okay? Yeah, it's weird. But I like it. I like it too. Oh man. So The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Like Taylor Jenkins read. This was a reread for both of us. It was. The first time I read it, absolutely loved it. Gave me chills. I cried. I laughed. It was phenomenal. And I did not see the twist coming. Me neither. And I pride myself on seeing the twists coming. Oh, same. Completely blindsided on this. Before we get any further, I know that all of you who have listened to us before know that we spoil everything. When I say that we're going to spoil absolutely everything about this book, we're going to spoil all of the spoilers. So, like we're going to talk about the twist, and I had forgotten about the twist.
SPEAKER_03I had too. I knew that there was a twist, but I forgot how twisty the twist was. So it's a really, really good one.
SPEAKER_01And if you don't want spoilers, then don't listen to this episode until you read the book.
SPEAKER_03This is your chance.
SPEAKER_01Swipe away, hit pause. Go back to one you've read or or you care about. This one is a re is really twisty, and I'm telling you. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. So if you don't want to hear it, um, turn by.
SPEAKER_03Now you've been forewarned. This is normal. You keep going. You can't say we didn't tell you to stop. Why did I go straight into labyrinth? I don't have a clue. I don't really know why you do most of the things. I've never seen that actually.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Okay, so I know that there are people out there listening to this that know exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, I know what you're talking about if she didn't actually watch the movie. I don't even feel embarrassed that I just did all of that because that's how much that movie means to me. Well, and I think that tells you a little bit who I am.
SPEAKER_03No shame. Um, but back to the book. Evelyn Hugo. First of all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, bombshell.
SPEAKER_03What a queen.
SPEAKER_01She is a queen. And I think that people are gonna be torn on her character. And I think that that is fair. But I love her.
SPEAKER_03I I love how unapologetically her she is. Yeah. I love the fact that not once through this entire book did she ever really apologize for anything. I mean, honestly, like she was she was like, I have done some bad things to get to where I am, and I would do them all over again. Yeah. Yeah. Because I did them to get somewhere or to protect someone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. And she talks about how the world doesn't give you anything, you have to take what you want. Yeah. And and that is a life lesson that she learned early on and just followed it throughout her life, and it got her to where she is, and she has no no regurts. You know what I mean? Yeah. No regurts. Oh man, I'm in a weird mood. You can see it in your eyes right now. Okay, so I guess we should start by. If you haven't read this and don't plan to read this, this book starts off with Monique. Monique, who is it in present day, it goes it goes back and forth. Right. But Monique works at a uh magazine called Vivol. Yeah, I'm gonna let you say that one. I only know that it's Vivant.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I only know that it's it's pronounced that way because I listened to the audio book.
SPEAKER_03So I'm like, oh, it's Vivon. I actually you'll be surprised. The first time I read this, I actually listened to the audiobook. It was a good one. I will first time I've actually sat down and read it with my eyes and not my ears. Yeah. But yeah, Monique, she's a journalist, she's a writer, and she's kind of not well known. She had a piece that kind of got some traction at a previous one. Yeah, but she's like, you know, pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to, you know, the writing hierarchy here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Also, in the very beginning, it sets up the fact that she's not very confident. Oh no. Like she said, she says, I need to work on my confidence line. Literally, literally says it to herself. Yeah. But she gets called into your office by her boss. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh, and says, Evelyn Hugo wants to do and and to put in perspective for anyone, again, who hasn't read this, think about like if Meryl Streep called your workplace and was like, I want you. Yeah. Evelyn Hugo is a world-renowned, very famous actress. Of decades. She's known for her acting chops for sure. She's also known for her rack. And she's known for the fact she was married seven times. Yeah. That the public knows of. Yeah. And um, so she's famous for a lot of different reasons, good and bad, and uh in between. But yeah, think of it as like someone like Meryl Streep or you know, Kate Blanchett, your favorite.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would not be able to handle that.
SPEAKER_03Calls and like, I want you to come write it, write an article about me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and exactly how I would feel like why me? I'm I am but lololi writer, why me? Uh she feels the exact same way. Like, why would she why would she ask you?
SPEAKER_03The editors, even like, we have no idea. And we tried to even recommend someone else and not you. She was like, No, I'm only doing it with Monique. Yeah. So right there, you should have smelled something. Right. Right. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01But you don't, like, she doesn't know why she wants her. Nobody like the whole time she's like, I don't know why. It's for me. Yeah. But also, hell yeah, I'll take it. Let's go. So she goes to Evelyn's apartment on uh Fifth Avenue and uh that she shared with her husband Harry Cameron that we love. But sorry, we'll talk about him later.
SPEAKER_03But she she thinks she's going to write like a uh just a piece for the article.
SPEAKER_01Well, she's auctioning off a lot of her gowns from her years of acting at Christie's to raise money for uh cancer research because her daughter, Evelyn Hugo's daughter, has just recently passed away from breast cancer. Yeah. And so that is what she is going, it's a guide on the pretense on the pretense that she's going to report on all of this, these dresses being auctioned.
SPEAKER_03And she sits down and Evelyn's like, actually, that was a lie. The dressing, the dresses being auctioned was not a lie. That was actually happening. But the whole like piece uh for the magazine, total ruse. Yeah, I just want you to write my life story. Yeah. She's gonna give she's gonna give Monique access that no one in the world has ever had. She's gonna tell her the complete and honest truth about all of her marriages, about her entire life, all the ugly details, right, with the promise that Monique will publish it upon her death.
SPEAKER_01Upon her death, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that she will not hold back, that she'll tell the absolute truth. Yeah. Because the truth is what is important.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And the world has had this idea of who Evelyn Hugo was, right. Based on, you know, who she was with. Who she was with or what the tabloid said. And she wants this to be the full and ugly truth of who she is as a person and what happened in her life. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So I feel like the easiest way for us to navigate talking about this is to go through her husband's chronologically, yeah. And when she married them, and then we're just gonna sprinkle in our likes and dislikes and our our hot takes along the way. And then that way we won't just give you a book report because I feel like it'd be very easy for me to just talk about all of the wonderful writing in this book.
SPEAKER_03Or we're gonna just sit here and just read quotes from the book like we did for the hour before we started recording this.
SPEAKER_01There's so this book is so beautifully written. I've never read anything other than Daisy Jones and the Six. That's the only thing I've read too. Yeah, but now I really want to read Atmosphere. So if you want to read Atmosphere, send us a message and let us know because I need I need an extra push for D. I just like it's a lesbian astronaut. What we live in Huntsville, Alabama. It's literally Rocket City. Why have we not read this yet?
SPEAKER_03But I'll tell you why I haven't read it yet. And I'm sure it's an amazing book and it's gotten all kinds of great reviews. But Evelyn Hugo hit me so hard in all the best ways that I am almost scared to read anything else.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because I'm afraid it won't live up to Evelyn Hugo for me.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I don't, this is a top five book for me. Oh, absolutely. And it made me cry and it made me laugh and it made me angry. Like all of the emotions.
SPEAKER_03It also made me proud to be a woman. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like a lot of like I feel Evelyn Hugo in general, she is a strong, independent woman, even though she was married seven times. She didn't need any of those men. She needed the first one. She needed the first one. She needed Ernie. Oh Ernie. But yeah, so I just feel like her being unapologetically her and knowing what she wants and taking it, regardless of, I mean, honestly, regardless of who it harms. Right. And and regardless of what an outcome could be for someone else, she knows how to get from point A to point B and she gets there.
SPEAKER_03I don't think she ever did anything in this entire book truly maliciously. Malicious, no. Um, she did it calculated, calculated advantageously, manipulative, yes, but I don't think she ever did anything to for the sole purpose of hurting someone, really. So yeah, husband number one, sweet little Ernie Diaz. Yes. So Evelyn grew up in Hell's Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen, and her mom died when she was pretty young. And her mom and her had this, you know, her mom's dream. Her mom's dream was to be an actress and to get them out of Hell's Kitchen. And her dad was not the nicest dude, and she knew she had to get out of there. And Ernie Diaz was her ticket out.
SPEAKER_01Right. It was like one of her friends' cousins or something like that. Yeah. It was just like a random boy, but he had gotten a job on the lot of some studio in Hollywood. Like sunset or something. Somewhere. And she was like, That's my ticket out.
SPEAKER_03And she knew if she wore the right clothes and said the right things, Ernie would propose. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And she, yeah, she filled out early. She was 14. But when she went and met Ernie, he was like, You're 16, right? And she was like, Just I am.
SPEAKER_03And I blew those candles out a few minutes ago.
SPEAKER_01And uh, you know, made him fall in love with her real quick with her whiles and got the hell out of Hell's Kitchen and found herself in Hollywood and stayed with little Ernie for a hot minute.
SPEAKER_03Until the studio said she couldn't. But yeah, I think I think Ernie was the only one she truly needed. And she even says that she traded her virginity for a ride to Hollywood in this book. And I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. You do. She need yeah, she truly needed out of that situation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a quote in the book somewhere that says, if you tell a woman that all she's good for is her looks, then she's gonna believe you. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. But I think that she was taught at a very, very young age because she did fill out so quickly and started noticing all of the attention she was getting from men. And you know, I think that she learned really early on that she could use uh the way that she looked to get what she wanted, and she did that her whole life. And I don't fault her for that at all, not a bit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so she gets to Hollywood and she again she was tenacious. Like if she set her mind to something, she didn't stop until she made it happen, really. Right, and so she was determined she was gonna be an actress and she just did whatever she had to do to get there and just wouldn't stop until they gave her the parts.
SPEAKER_01Because they started giving her parts originally, they gave her parts that were like girl number two, or like she had like one line in this one movie because she was Cuban and she didn't look the part that they wanted her to look. And so Harry Cameron, he was like a producer at the studio, and so he she's known him from the minute she made it to Hollywood, right? And he told her, You're not gonna get those parts unless you look the part. And so they well, she slept with one of the other producers. She slept with the executive producer, didn't sleep with him, he went down on her in the office. That was she was like, that was how she got her part, her first like real part, and Ari. Ari something, yeah, something like that. He was like the executive producer of Sunsep Studios or whatever it is, you know, just like this big dude who's like whatever, and he likes young girls, and so she used that to her advantage and was like, Okay, he's gonna give you a part, but this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna change your name, we're gonna dye your hair blonde, and you're gonna lose the accent because you're not Cuban here anymore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no speaking Spanish anymore. Right. And she did it, she went along with it, and she got the parts. It took her a little bit. She knew that she wasn't the best actress, yeah, but she tried really hard. But one of the caveats to all of that is she had to start being seen with all the other famous actors, right? Like Don Adler.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03And to do that, she couldn't be going home to just be a little Ernie. So I think that it said that like the studio gave him a hefty, like basically, you know, a they paid him off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they paid him off.
SPEAKER_03And she wrote him a really sweet letter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and he like has a has a house and a family, and he's like all happy.
SPEAKER_03He took the money and went and bought a house, like, and you know, yeah, made his life better. And I think they're both better because of it.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, because she never loved him.
SPEAKER_03And and I don't think she loved him in a like a small, like platonic kind of love way. I don't think that she like she definitely wasn't in love with him. No, but like she also didn't marry him for love. But I think she loved him for what he offered. She was probably grateful for him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there you go. But I don't think she loved him.
SPEAKER_03So, you know, obviously one of the things that you want when you're an up-and-coming actress is to be seen out on the town with all the other people who are, you know, uh rub elbows with the the rich and famous, so you can become rich and famous. And she became infatuated, and he became infatuated with her, but the famous Don Adler.
SPEAKER_01Oh uh Adler was a very famous name in Hollywood in general. I think both of his parents were actually the Barry Morris, kind of.
SPEAKER_03But um, but yeah, so she truly fell in love with this guy, and they were good together. Like they're they seemed like very compatible, very sweet, truly loved each other, but also were determined to both make their careers better, and being together certainly did that for both of them. Yeah. And I think Don, in a lot of ways, was just trying to get out of the shadow of his parents and prove that he was a true actor and not just writing their coattails. Right. And so, yeah, they were Hollywood's sweethearts.
SPEAKER_01They were, they were for a while. And I she she truly loved him, and she talks about how she found out that she could want and lust after a man in a way that she had never experienced before. And it wasn't just a means to an end, it was like a need, like a passion, like a burning need to be close to this man, to have a relationship with him, to be close with him, to sleep with him, like all of it.
SPEAKER_03Like it's the first time that she'd ever felt that because Yeah, sex had always just been something that you did currency, yeah. It was currency, and this was the first time she ever really experienced pleasure and passion and knew that it could be anything other than a transaction.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But she also learned very quickly how society views women and their sexuality. There's a quote that I loved. It says, that is the fastest way to ruin a woman's reputation after all, to imply that she has not adequately threaded the needle that is being sexually satisfying without ever appearing to desire sexual satisfaction. So, like you can want it, but you can't want it too much. But if you don't want it at all, that's also bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like you're poor or you're a prude and there's no in between.
SPEAKER_03Right. And you have to thread that needle, you have to walk that very fine line. Yeah, or somebody's gonna hate you either.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and also like Evelyn was such a like her, she looked sexual. Like she had this gorgeous, like, she didn't have an hourglass figure, she just had really big boobs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, she's she had no ass. No ass whatsoever.
SPEAKER_01Big old boobs, but like gorgeous brown skin. Everybody talked about how the blonde hair with her dark skin, dark skin didn't seem like it was natural, but then it seemed like it should always be that way. Like it, it was just it just worked, and she was gorgeous. They always talked about her how her eyebrows were very like straight. I like I I can't imagine straight eyebrows the way that they're saying that it's so attractive. Like, I guess I'm thinking of today's terms and like straight eyebrows, what? Yeah, but um anyway, I feel like she was like people looked at her and thought sex, yeah, anyway, and she knew that, and that was her brand for a while.
SPEAKER_03But she couldn't also really lean into that, or she was a whore, yeah, or she was a whore, exactly.
SPEAKER_01And so they they had they did movies together too, but she also talked to Harry about wanting like a really good part. She wanted to part with grit, and so little women is something that they were gonna do, and she was like, I want Joe, I want to be Joe March in Little Women, and that's what I'm gonna do. Well, the actress that they cast for Beth, who everybody knows, everybody loves Beth. I've read Little Women, I've watched Little Women, I've seen the play, I've seen the movie. Everybody loves Beth because Beth dies, okay? And she's like happy go lucky until she's dead, okay? And like she's like, whoever is gonna be Beth, they're gonna love her anyway. But they cast Celia St. St.
SPEAKER_03James. Oh this teenager that's gonna like act me under the table.
SPEAKER_01So her and her other two actress friends that are in the movie are pissed when they find out that Celia St. James.
SPEAKER_03Teenager's gonna show us up. Because she's really actually good. Like every she wasn't just a pretty face, she had the acting chops, and throughout the book, her and Evelyn agree out of the two of them, she was the better actress. Yeah, but they were also kind of polar opposites because you've got, you know, big-breasted Evelyn with no ass, and Celia has no chest, all ass. Yeah. And so, but yeah, they just like a puzzle piece.
SPEAKER_01Um and Celia She's also super pale and redheaded and just and she's kind of like very wholesome in a lot of ways. Well, she's from Georgia, that's the whole thing. Like Evelyn's like, I hail from Hale's kitchen, and then she's like, I'm a Georgia peach. Yeah. I've come here just to see what this Hollywood's all about, you know? But big city. Yeah. And like her family is extremely wealthy back home in Georgia. So if she doesn't make it, everything's special, just go home. No, right, but then she is really, really good and talented. And everybody hates her. And she comes on set the first day and she's like, Oh, I'm just really nervous.
SPEAKER_03I just want to, and they're like, She also kind of figures out though how it works because the first time her and Evelyn ever really kind of spend any time together, uh Celia immediately just kind of tries to capitalize on it and go be seen somewhere. She's like, You wanna go get milkshakes? And by that I mean do you want to go somewhere so somebody will photograph me with you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and Evelyn's like, I won't be played.
SPEAKER_03I'm not gonna be manipulated like this, but I understand, and I, you know, game game recognizes game. Yeah. And so they come to an agreement that Celia's gonna help her be a better actress. Right. And she'll also just, you know, help her be seen.
SPEAKER_01So be like the Don Adler for her in the beginning. Like she'll be the one that will be like, Oh, Celia St. James is out with Evelyn Hugo. Yeah. Besties. Yay. But yeah, I they do become besties. They do, they do, yeah. They become besties. Besties. And then they were best friends.
SPEAKER_03And history said that they were best friends.
SPEAKER_01Just roommates.
SPEAKER_03Nothing else.
SPEAKER_01Nothing else. Um, we haven't talked about the fact that Don was an alcoholic and abusive.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he hit her.
SPEAKER_01He hit her two weeks after they got married, he started hitting her. And and I feel like the way that she talks about abuse is a way that I could understand someone in the midst of it feeling. Because I think that if you really and truly do love the person that you're with and they abuse you in that way, whether it be emotionally or sexually or physically, in her case it was physically. I she was like, But I love him. And he is so sorry afterwards, and he always apologizes and tells me that it'll never happen again, and I can just see it in his face that he's really, really sorry, you know, and you make that excuse, and then it's good for a little while, and he makes up for it, and then it happens again. And so it's like just enough time for you to feel a little bit safe, yeah, and then it happens again, and then it happens again, and then he pushes her down the stairs, and then he hits her in the face right before she films a movie, and they have to like pancake make up her face so that she can go on screen. And I feel like it happened for so long that it was almost normal. Like she like taught herself that that was just normal, and she loved him, so there was no faulting. She knew it was bad, she knew it was wrong, but she still loved him. Yeah, and she even had a conversation with Harry after he found out about it. It and she's like, but I but I love him. Like she uh but I love him and I don't you know and she I think that she loved Don forever, like throughout even when they weren't together afterwards, like and we talked about this before, like if you spend any amount of time with a partner and you love them or you're in love with them or you have love for them, I don't feel like love just goes away. I feel like it's just like energy and it changes, yeah, but I don't feel like it goes away. And so the fact that she was in love with him so deeply for a long time, like I don't can't remember how long they were actually together, but it was years.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think too, I think I mean there's different types of love, and there's different you can feel love for someone in a multitude of ways. You can be in love with them, you can love them platonically, you can love them as someone who is part of your life and helped get you to where you are. And I think that, like you said, I think if you love someone truly at some point in your life, that never will fully go away. There's always gonna be a part of you that loves them in some way. It may not be the same love as it was before, but you're gonna at least love that you are who you are because of them. So yeah, I think she never she never shied away from talking about her love for Don.
SPEAKER_01Because she's uh she's like, I loved him. I I've always I loved him, you know. Like even later when she's having conversations with Celia, she's like, No, but I I absolutely loved Don. And you are forgetting the fact that I also loved a man.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You know, like And that brings us around to uh how her marriage with Don ended, yeah, was it kind of came blew up because at the same time that things were getting really bad with him and he she found out that he had been cheating on her, she also realized that she had developed feelings for Celia St.
SPEAKER_01James Which, okay, they got really close. They were super cute besties, and they hung out all the time. And originally it did start out as they were friends, they were friends, and it started out like, I'll help you out, I'll go out with you, we'll go shopping, we'll go get milkshakes, we'll go wherever. But then it ended up being an actual friendship and they love spending time together, and it wasn't hard for her to do that anymore because she actually enjoyed hanging out with Celia.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And so one of the times that they were hanging out, they're at Evelyn's house and they're drinking wine together, and it's so super cute. But even in that moment, Evelyn is still with Don at this point. Yeah, and you can start you see that she's starting to notice Celia in ways that I don't think heterosexual women notice women. Right. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Like she knows about the freckles on her hip and things like that.
SPEAKER_01Um, well, even just like I don't know, just the way that they there's just so many, so many small, subtle things like being so close or like her drinking out of the same glass as you, like thinking about like, are your lips touching where my lips were touching? Like things that you don't think about if you're just hanging out with a platonic girlfriend. Right. You know what I mean? And then she spills wine all over her top and has to give her a new top. And when Celia's changing, she's like, Oh, and then I noticed there's a line of brown freckles around her hip. And like that is an image that she like photographed. Seared into her brain. Yeah. Straight women don't do that. Yeah. And if they do, like, correct me. But like, I just don't think that they pay attention to women that way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I don't know if you have any freckles on your hip.
unknownSo I don't know.
SPEAKER_01If you've never seen well, I don't know. I'm like, have we swam together? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03I don't even know if I have any freckles on my hip.
SPEAKER_01But you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Like, if you are like if you're like, yeah, if it's platonic, you're probably not paying that close of attention to things like that. And so I think this was the first time in her life that she ever truly had feelings for a woman outside of just being plot. Well, I don't think for one, she talks about she never had a friend before, before Harry.
SPEAKER_00That's true.
SPEAKER_03So she didn't really have any anything to go off of. But yeah, this was the first time that she really started seeing something about her friendship with Celia was changing. And she finally started to admit that. And she admits it to Monique in the whole time that this book is going back and forth, we get what was happening to her back when she was married to Don and all their other husbands. But at the same time, you get scenes of her talking to Monique present day, right? Because she's sitting in a room day after day, Monique and Evelyn, and Evelyn is just telling her the story. And Monique is absorbing all of this. And one of the big things, the like secret that is coming out in this book, or one of them, is who the real love of Evelyn's life was. Because that's everyone talks about how many husbands she had, how many times she was married, right? Which one of them did she really love? And so it comes out very quickly in the book that it wasn't any of the husbands. It wasn't any of them. The love of her life was Celia St. James.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so Monique asked the question that everybody wants to know. Yeah. She says, Evelyn, who was your great love? You can tell me. Evelyn looks out the window, breathes in deeply, and says, Celia St. James. I my heart stopped.
SPEAKER_03I know. I know I my heart stopped.
SPEAKER_01And like to have okay, I'm thinking from not just me as a reader, but also like if I was in Monique's shoes and you just got that truth bomb dropped in your lap, because nobody listen, nobody knows.
SPEAKER_03The public had no idea that her and Celia were anything other than friends. Right.
SPEAKER_01There were a few tiny rumors, but they were quickly squashed, and we'll get to that. But nobody ever knew.
SPEAKER_03Nobody outside of their very, very tight small circle, right, knew this. And so Monique, like any good journalist, realizes that she has got a big fish on a hook right now. And so she's like, basically, am I telling your coming out story? Are you coming out as a lesbian? And Evelyn is like, hold up. That's not what I said. And she says, Haven't you been listening to a single thing I've told you? I love Celia, but I also, before her, love Don. In fact, I'm positive that if Don hadn't turned out to be a spectacular asshole, I probably never would have been capable of falling in love with someone else at all. I'm bisexual. Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box, Monique. Don't do that.
SPEAKER_01Which like fucking snaps, Evelyn. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Pop off, Queen.
SPEAKER_01Jesus. And and that's like that's like the whole thing. Like I do not identify as bisexual. I am a lesbian. But we all hear about bisexuality and how they feel like they're erased in so many different circles. And not only like the queer community, but also the heterosexual community. Like if you are, if somebody like sees you with a man, then they can automatically assume that you're heterosexual.
SPEAKER_03And if they see you with someone of the same so like if you're a woman and they see you with another woman, then they're like this gonna assume that you're a lesbian. And it is like a big thing that nobody stops to ask what you know, how would you like to identify?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And I think that nowadays it's becoming much more mainstream to be like, you know, what are your pronouns? What do you how what's your identity? Like, I don't want to get it wrong. And I think that that's important. And the fact that this happens with Monique as the interviewer, that's another part of the story that is Monique is biracial. She has a white mother and a black father.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so immediately after she's called out by Evelyn, she's like, I cannot believe that I just did that to you. When this has been done to me with my race my entire life.
SPEAKER_03Like I am people choose to ignore half of me.
SPEAKER_01Right. Because I present like African Americans, or I present, you know, right. Like so the the white part of me is completely erased, and like we get strange looks when I'm out in public with my mother because she's white, but I look black. Right. And how did I do that? Like, how did I just like ignore half of yourself?
SPEAKER_03And I think that this is something that this book covers from a few different angles and very, very well.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because fast forwarding just a little bit since we're on this topic, it that her like Evelyn's sexuality was a problem for Celia for almost the entire book. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That was I mean, I don't feel like it changed, honestly.
SPEAKER_03No, I don't really. I mean, I think she just finally just gave up well fighting it in the end for them to just be together. Be together, yeah. But she was never comfortable with the fact that not only would Evelyn sleep with men, but that she could truly love a man and be fulfilled by a man. By a man, yeah. And I think that that's huge because like having your partner just be so adamantly against so much of your identity that they can't even be with you at times. Because they broke up over that.
SPEAKER_01Um even though even though it was for her, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean Evelyn sleeps with a man to protect her and Celia's relationship.
SPEAKER_01Because everybody that like there's like rumors circling that they're more than friends, and so she's like, I'm gonna go have like a crazy Vegas wedding, you know.
SPEAKER_03So that I mean that brings us to husband number three, Mick Reva. Yeah, who she does go and just have this like 24-hour Vegas wedding fully planned out. This is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get him to marry me in Vegas and then get it and get it annulled. But that's gonna squash all the rumors. Right. It does. It does, but it also squashes her entire relationship with Celia.
SPEAKER_01Because she's like, You slept with him? And she's like, uh yeah, that was the plan all along. And she's like, No, no, no, no, no. I'm like, I didn't say you could go sleep with him. I said you could go marry him and get it annulled. And she was like, What do you think happens when you got him to marry me? Marry me. Like, what what do you think? I just like got him with my charm. No, no, it was these tits and a lot of alcohol.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and Mick was like a lot of men who had this idea of how grand it would be to be with Evelyn Hugo, like the name Evelyn Hugo, not the person, but the name. The name and the persona of Evelyn Hugo. And then he wakes up the next morning and she her mascara is smeared and her hair's messed up. On purpose. She's got morning breath.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like let yourself be disheveled and like not Evelyn Hugo. The opposite of Evelyn Hugo.
SPEAKER_03And you could like audibly hear the bubble burst for him in that scene of like, he's like, oh, this isn't as glamorous as I thought it was gonna be. She also purposely made herself bad in bed. Yeah, she was like starfish. She's just like not moving because we're gonna lay here.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. But also the fact that like all of that was so calculated, even down to the breakup.
SPEAKER_03Like she knew she was a fucking genius. Let's be real.
SPEAKER_01And she even says, like, if they gave Oscars for this, she'd have one of them already had like this was the best performance in my life. Because even at the end, when he's breaking up with her, she realizes this was part of it for him. Like he likes leaving, he likes the let the end.
SPEAKER_03He likes the to be the one that like breaks their heart.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and he uses the same line that he used for his last wife, like, I'm not a good guy, and you deserve better than me. And she's like, I just read this, and and people, like you know, like I you said the same thing about it. Yesterday, yeah, but also she just internally, like, she just is like, Oh yeah, okay, like I'm sad, and she throws a phone at him or something like that, like to like really sell it, give him a story to tell.
SPEAKER_03The only part of it she didn't plan out was the throwing of the phone. Oh, this is improving. Good. This is good, yeah, yeah. Some of her best acting with that 24-hour marriage to make. Yeah. After that, so that was husband. We've covered husbands one, two, and three.
SPEAKER_01Love it.
SPEAKER_03Um, husband number four. I really liked Rex North.
SPEAKER_01I did too.
SPEAKER_03Rex, so this marriage.
SPEAKER_01No, because Celia breaks up with her over the Mick thing and leaves and does not speak to her for years.
SPEAKER_03For years. Also, no notes. She finds out that in that 24-hour marriage, she ended up knocked up. Oh, fuck, I forgot about that. And here comes Harry. We've got to take a moment for Harry.
SPEAKER_01Listen, I I I love him. I love him.
SPEAKER_03Everyone in everyone needs a Harry in their life.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03Full stop. Because Harry is one of those friends that like it doesn't matter. You could call them and be like, I want to go get a cup of coffee. I need help getting my oil changed, or I've got to hide a body.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It doesn't matter. Harry's gonna show up. He's gonna be like, Do I need to bring a shovel or do you already have one? Yeah. And I've got a tarp. Yeah. He's like, I got the tarp. You got the whose car are we taking? And he drive like he literally drove her to Mexico to have an abortion with and took care of her afterwards. Yeah. And I think that's when she realized how much she had been missing in her life before, not having someone a true friend who had her back. Period. Yeah. There is something so freeing and stabilizing about knowing that no matter what, there is at least one person on this earth that is in your corner no matter what. And that you can be your true authentic self with them. And they're never gonna judge you and they're never gonna leave you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so this I loved this quote because this came after all of that and after Celia had left. You don't know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, It's okay. You can fall down now. I'll catch you. Dude, the tears.
SPEAKER_00And that is hairy. Like that just that is hairy.
SPEAKER_03And they're that for both of they're that for each other. It's not even, it's not one-sided. It is one of the truest like partnerships that I feel like has ever been depicted.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I feel like at this moment we should probably tell the listeners that Harry Cameron is gay. Is gay.
SPEAKER_03And Evelyn finds it out pretty quickly. Yeah. Because she kind of makes a comment like, Well, you've never tried to sleep with me. Everyone else has. Honey, you're not my type. Yeah. Wink wink.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Which is which is fabulous. But I mean, in this day and age, he had to be.
SPEAKER_03He had to keep that real under under wraps. Right. I mean, he could be arrested, killed. People would have wanted to kill him for his sexuality. And so he never really, at least for most of the book, explicitly said anything. It was more of just a like, I'm going to hint at this and you're going to figure it out. And then we're not going to talk about it anymore, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01And they had the conversation when when Evelyn starts figuring out that she has feelings for Celia, they have a conversation in the car, her and Harry, like, I think that we should be true friends. Like, I think we should tell each other everything. And he's saying, you know, I I don't want to burden you with that. That like my That's a big secret to Carrie. Full truth is very sticky secret that if you, you know, like now you have deniable plausibility. Like if you don't know anything. And so, like, I if I'm if I'm doing that with you, you know, and then Evelyn then is like, I think we've got a little bit of that secret in all of us. Yeah, we kind of share a little something on this. Agreed. I feel like everybody's got a little bit of that secret. Yeah. Um, but anyway, I feel like their relationship throughout the book is the best relationship. So sweet. Even over Celia. And I love the fact that she's so in love with Celia, but I think that her and Harry's relationship was more stable.
SPEAKER_03They were, to me, the truest definition of soulmates. Absolutely. Her and Harry. Absolutely. Yeah. 100%.
SPEAKER_01Her and Celia loved each other till the end. Love of each other's lives. Yes. But her and Harry were soulmates. For sure.
SPEAKER_03And that just to me was like one of the most beautiful things about this book was just watching her and Harry.
SPEAKER_01And also just love each other. All of the different relationships. We talked about this before we started recording. There are so many different relationships that are in this book.
SPEAKER_03All the husbands kind of depict a different type of relationship that you can have. And I mean, Rex North, husband number four, was a marriage of convenience for both of them. Right. So after Celia leaves, after the abortion and Harry, Evelyn's doing another movie. She's doing it with Rex North, who's another just good-looking guy in Hollywood. They're doing Anna and Karin and U. Yeah. And but it's not, it's kind of getting like mixed reviews going into it. It's not out yet, but like Word on the Street is kind of up in up in there on whether it's going to be really good or not. And so they're trying to figure out a way to get like the buzz. The buzz. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they come up with why don't we get married? Yeah. The two stars of the film, we're going to get married, and then they can watch them on film and see their chemistry.
SPEAKER_03Right. And I mean, not a bad plan.
SPEAKER_01No, it worked. Yeah. And and they were together for a few years. Like they it but it was a completely platonic, arranged, like Rex. He could sleep with whoever he wanted to, you know. She could sleep with whoever like it. As long as they were discreet and it didn't, you know, get get out.
SPEAKER_03And they lived in the same house, separate bedrooms. And I mean, honestly, it was they weren't like super friends, I don't think. They weren't anywhere close to like best friends or anything like that. But it worked. I do think it was a sweet marriage in a lot of ways. And there was even a scene where, and I thought for a second that this was gonna go the way that probably everyone else reading this thought that it was gonna go. There was a scene where they had been celebrating and they'd had a little bit too much to drink. And for the first time, Rex puts the moves on Evelyn and comes into her bedroom and like, you know, she hesitates. She hesitates. She thought about it for a second. Yeah. And I think they both were kind of a little bit lonely. And, you know, he makes it known that he wants to sleep with her and she ends up turning him down. And I was like, Oh, this is not gonna go well.
SPEAKER_01Cause you know Yeah, I thought he was gonna be a CAD.
SPEAKER_03I think he was gonna be like awful and like Or it was gonna go where he wasn't gonna take no for an answer. Right. And he was such a gentleman.
SPEAKER_01He was just like, You're always gonna wonder if it was good or not. You're always gonna think about it. And she was like, I probably will, but we're not gonna do that. And he's like, All right, like salutes and goes to his bedroom, like a nice little night. And yeah, and that I mean, that is what that marriage was for. It was for marketing and it did its job. And then Rex started dating one of his exes again and found out that he actually loved her, like fell in love again and wanted to have a family, and she was pregnant, and he was like, I want to be with Joan.
SPEAKER_03And so they had to figure out how to get out of the marriage though, without it being obvious that it was, you know, fake. Right.
SPEAKER_01But they both pretended like they were having affairs, right? Right.
SPEAKER_03And so Evelyn was having an affair, he pretended to have an affair, which it was true, with his ex.
SPEAKER_01I think her name was Joan. I couldn't be wrong.
SPEAKER_03Would explain how she ended up pregnant, but they had to figure out who Evelyn was gonna have an affair with. And lo and behold, the most eligible bachelor in the room, Mr. Harry Cameron.
SPEAKER_00Harry Cameron.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god. Watching them actually be husband. So this was also another sweet thing to me. Yeah, because Harry never thought being a gay man in in that day and age, I don't think Harry ever thought that he could have a family.
SPEAKER_01I don't either.
SPEAKER_03I don't think he ever thought that he could be married and come home to a spouse and be happy and have a child and make his mother happy because he was like, Mom keeps wanting me to bring somebody home. Yeah. And they had the God, the best platonic marriage.
SPEAKER_01Like that was And the way that he proposed, well, proposed it to her. He didn't propose to her, but the way that he proposed this arrangement to her is I'm tired of being alone. I'm I'm tired of living alone. I love you. I I mean I've always loved you, but loved you as in, you know, we're besties, not like I'm in love with you. Right. But I I love you and I think that we could have a beautiful life together. And I think that we could be wonderful partners. And I can't imagine anybody better to spend my life with than you. And I want a family. Yeah. So like, let's have a family. Like we can do that eventually. Like, don't you want to have a family? And she's like, Yeah, I mean, eventually I do. And and and that was just the most beautiful full circle. I don't know. It just goes to show that soulmates come in all different shapes and sizes.
SPEAKER_03And if that's what works for the family, then marriages and families come in all shapes, sizes. Their family, even though the marriage was for show, it didn't take away from how much they loved each other and how true and authentic and valid their family was.
SPEAKER_01And they always came back to each other. Yeah. That was the thing too, because I mean Harry would could he continue to date men. Right. And Evelyn was free to date women or men as long as they were discreet about it because they didn't want drama, because they just wanted to be they just wanted to be together.
SPEAKER_03They wanted to come home to somebody and they wanted to have a family. And it ended up working out real well. I love the idea of the family that is. It made me super happy. So during all of this, um, some rumors started going around even more heavily about Miss Celia St. James. And so she figured out that she had to save face somehow. And so she quote unquote started dating John Braverman. Uh like the all-American football player. Yeah, like if you look up like apple pie and American in the dictionary, it's just a picture of this dude. Which worked for her little George Peach self. Oh, for sure. They made the cutest little like all-American couple, I'm sure. And then Harry comes home one day and he's like, Evelyn, I gotta tell you something. I've met somebody. I've met somebody. Oh, he's wonderful. He's wonderful. And he's dating your ex. Married to your ex. Oh yeah. They I forgot they got married. Did they were were they married or engaged at that point? One or the other. Anyway, yeah. They were engaged andor married at this time. But lo and behold, the love of Harry's life is Celia St. James's beard. And he's like, hear me out. Hear me out if for a second. Like, like, listen. But that was the first time that Evelyn really thought, really realized. That marriage was a sham. Yeah. Even knowing that Celia only liked women. Only liked women, you know, and I mean, honestly, for Celia to completely erase the whole bisexuality thing from Evelyn. Yeah. For Evelyn to still give her the benefit of the doubt that maybe her marriage wasn't fake. Yeah. You know, good for you. But the moment that he said who he was in love with, I was like, I have an idea. Yes.
SPEAKER_00We have an idea. Let's do it. This is gonna be so great.
SPEAKER_01They did it. And and she's married to John, who's also gay, who's in love with Harry. And now Evelyn's married to Harry, and it's just like this beautiful little square that they've got going on. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so for a long time, that was that was the life. That was what they led. John and Celia were married, and Evelyn and Harry were married, and they were what did they call the double daggers?
SPEAKER_03We went out to dinner in public, the four of us looking like two pairs of heterosexuals without a heterosexual in the bunch. And it actually started a bunch of rumors because they were always seen the four of them together, these two couples together, these two married couples, and they were seen everywhere and they were always having the best time and whatever. And everyone started thinking that, like, are they swingers? Right. And they loved it, like the buzz about them and their, you know, them being swingers or whatever. And Evelyn even says, 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. Like it was easier for the public to accept that they were swingers than that they were in loving, committed relationships with people of the same sex.
SPEAKER_01With people of the same sex, which is insane. But you gotta think this is the time while they were in New York living this life that was so wonderful. This was when Stonewall happened. Stonewall happened, yeah. So I mean, this was just the beginning of the gay rights movement, one of the huge.
SPEAKER_03It was the big turning point catalyst for it. Also, Harry and Evelyn decide that they do want to have a child. Yeah. And they could, you know, have adopted.
SPEAKER_01They could I could have they could have used a surrogate. And Celia asks that too, because obviously, like Harry stays at his apartment and Evelyn stays at her apartment, and Celia stays with Evelyn and John stays with Harry. Right. But Harry's always present. They all just pop back in it. It's all like this big happy family.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they lived really close to each other. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so Celia says, like, have you thought about surrogacy and or or something like that? Like, do you have to sleep? Aren't there other ways? Do you have to sleep with Harry? And Evelyn says, I don't want anyone to question why Harry and I aren't having our own child. Like, I don't want the question to be out in the world, why are they using a surrogate? Right. If they're so madly in love and they're married, you know, like and I understand that for sure. Yeah. I mean, but also I I don't know. Like, even though they had to have sex to have a baby, I just feel like the making of that child was so like planned and hoped for that. It was done with love. I was about to say, it's not even about the sexual act of it. It's just we both want a child that looks like us and that has our quirks. We want to do that together. And we said that from the beginning, and so let's do it together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And these are people who are, again, in relationships where they can't have that with their the love of their life. There's they're with their partner, their partner. And so this is a way for them to have that. Like Harry never would have been able to have a child. Had it not been for Evelyn that had his eyes or you know, his laugh or his smile or whatever. And he is such a good father.
SPEAKER_02So wonderful.
SPEAKER_03They have a sweet, like the sweetest little girl, Connor.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03And he is su they're both amazing parents. Yeah. But he is such a good father. And I'm so happy that they did that. That that was able to happen for them. But it isn't without its problems. Again, Celia, again, can't get over the fact of Evelyn sleeping with the man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Even if it is to give their family group a child.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It is a stumbling block. She doesn't leave, but it is definitely like.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's kind of one of those things that like she's like, I'm not going to put too much thought in it because I don't like it. I can't think of it. I don't like it. During one of her fights with Celia, you know, a big part of her relationship with Celia was Evelyn fighting so hard and doing everything she could to keep it from going public because it would ruin all of their lives. They would all lose their jobs. They would be, you know, ostracized and from society, potentially physically harmed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And also, I do want to note that another reason that Celia had an issue with Evelyn in general was that Evelyn was not willing to give up her fame for anything. She was not willing to give up her career for anything. And that included Celia.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Because Celia multiple times was like, I will be out with you. I want to be with you. I want to tell everyone about you. I don't care. I don't need the money, obviously. And that was a conversation when Evelyn was like, I I don't have a f a wealthy family in Georgia. You know, like in early towards the beginning, but like even towards the end when they were like ungodly rich from being like Oscar winners and like really famous actors. Like Evelyn was not willing to give up her career or the spotlight for Celia for a really long time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And she even says, I hated being called a lesbian. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with loving a woman, mind you. No, I'd come to terms with that a long time ago. But Celia only saw things in black and white. She liked women and only women, and I liked her. And so she often denied the rest of me.
SPEAKER_01It just made me think, it made me think like that the whole erasure idea. It really makes me think about like the people in relationships or people that are married. And I'm not talking about me because I am a lesbian. So I can't like speak from experience. But we do have friends and people close to us that have gone through experiences where they're in a lesbian relationship and then their partner comes out as a trans. And so when their partner transitioned, what does that mean for his wife's sexuality? Right. Is his wife still a lesbian married to a man? Or is his wife now heterosexual? Like what is what is the external like I don't know. Like if you like we were talking about a woman in a relationship with a woman, we're gonna look at that and automatically think lesbian. We're not gonna think, oh, maybe she's bisexual. And we probably won't ask, honestly. Like that's just we we probably won't. Yeah. But that happens so often that, like, does your sexuality change when you're within a relationship or the confines of a relationship? No, it doesn't, but and that's still part of you, but having that erased in any any sense of the word, it would feel like you were having part of your identity taken away.
SPEAKER_03I I have quite a few friends who are bisexual. And one thing that I really started thinking of this episode's gonna come out on July 1st, but we're recording it in June during Pride Month. Happy Pride. Happy Pride. And I have a few friends who are bisexual who are married to men. And I think the world would look at them and not have any idea that they were queer. Yeah. And that's sad to me. And I think even our community would look at them and think, oh, well, what do they have to celebrate pride? You know, exactly. She's married to a man.
SPEAKER_01I think that that's something that our community is guilty of. Oh, for sure. Especially when it comes to bisexuals. Like, I don't know what it is about bisexuals, but they're just like, oh, you're with a man though, so now you have like you're you're you're more privileged than I am because I'm with a woman, so I have to fight for it. Or like people look at me in a certain way just because they're not struggling because they are like heteropresenting. I say that with air quotes. You know what I mean? Like, I we do it to ourselves, like we do that within our community. I can only imagine what people outside of the community would be thinking.
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, they have every right to celebrate Pride Month, just like I do. Like, get up here beside me, Queen. It's our month. Let's go. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Like, and for all the husbands out there that are married to bisexual women or or wives out there that are married to bisexual men, and you show up and you let them let their freak flag fly during pride. Yeah, I love it.
SPEAKER_03That is we love a like a supportive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh my god, let's go. Let's go. And because and that's like that's supporting your spouse, it's part of it. Like it's it's loving every single part of who you're with, regardless of whether or not that includes you.
SPEAKER_03And just because you're like, just because you have the ability to be attracted to men and women, yeah, doesn't take away from how much you love and are attracted to your spouse, whether they are a man or a woman. Yeah. And I think that that was Celia's big hang up is she was jealous, I guess. Jealous of the fact that it wasn't just women that that did it for Evelyn. And I mean, I could I I guess I could see that, you know, if it was another woman, it would be more of like a head-on competition. Right. But with a man, there are things about that man that Celia doesn't have, parts that she doesn't have and things that she can't do, and things like that. And so I could see the jealousy, but also to just for the entirety of them knowing each other, for her just to like shit all over her bisexuality was I don't know, it was a lot for me.
SPEAKER_01She also was like really hateful and awful when she got hurt.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Celia had a real bad habit of when she got hurt or mad, she was like a win, she was gonna just lash out in the evilest way she could think of. The worst way. I will say though this is one of my favorite Celia quotes because as a boob girl, I appreciate this about her. Um I love a rabbit. And Evelyn, Evelyn would use this to her advantage. And you know, if you got it, flaw it. Flawn it. Um she said Celia had one thing in common with almost every straight man in America. She wanted nothing more than to get her hands on my chest. And I was like, Yeah, I understand it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like if we were mid-argument.
SPEAKER_03And then the shirt comes off. I'm like, what were we talking about? But yeah, I just that that part of Cel that was the one thing about Celia. I liked Celia as a character overall. I loved Evelyn.
SPEAKER_01I loved it. Loved Evelyn. And I think that she thought that she was a terrible person. Like she said multiple times, I I know that I'm a bad person. I know that I'm not good. I know that I'm not compassionate very like all the time.
SPEAKER_03But she also refused to apologize. Apologize. She was like, I'd do every bit of it again. And I respected the hell out of that. Me too. So Harry Cameron, wonderful marriage. Yes, absolutely fantastic, and can't last forever.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, Evelyn and and Celia break up again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Which is super sad. But Evelyn stays with Harry.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And Harry has met someone new. Oh, John dies. John Braverman dies. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we skipped over that whole part.
SPEAKER_01Sorry, John Braverman dies like a heart attack or something. He's not even a 50, and he he has a heart attack and he passes away, and it's very sad for everybody. And Harry is just absolutely shattered. That was the one of his life.
SPEAKER_03Harry almost didn't recover.
SPEAKER_01Right. Alcoholic. It dropped away.
SPEAKER_03The only thing that kept him going was his daughter, Connor. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. And so Celia leaves again. And for some reason it's losing it's leaving me. Like, why?
SPEAKER_03Oh, um, so Evelyn was doing a movie. The movie. Okay. She was doing a movie, and she was doing it with um Max uh Girard. Girard, um, who was a French director director. And she had done a movie. Um, we kind of skipped over this because it's wasn't super important, but um, after her divorce from Don, she was kind of blacklisted in Hollywood. And so the only acting job she could get was in France with Max. And he gave her a chance and she killed it. This movie was a sensation.
SPEAKER_01Because she showed three seconds of her boobs.
SPEAKER_03Well, no, it stopped. He was gonna show her boobs, and he she convinced him to cut it off right the moment she's like coming out of a it's like one of those scenes where she's rising out of the water and it goes to black, like fades to black the moment you're gonna see boobs. Yeah, and she talks about people who would watch that over and over again with the hope that they were gonna get that last like two, three seconds of that film. But she is doing another movie with Max, and she's doing it with Don Adler, who he's sober, he's regretting all of his life choices at this point, and he's trying to make it as like a true legit actor at this point. And sober Don is a pretty good actor, apparently. So they're doing this movie together and they're playing a couple, and there's a sex scene. Yeah, and it they talk as they're going through. The one thing that I will say is uh Don and Evelyn, and most of the actors and actresses that they talk about in this movie, but I think particularly at this point, Don and Evelyn both really do put everything everything they can into their acting roles to make it believable. They really want to sell this, yeah. And so part of selling this particular sex scene is it has to look like Evelyn's character wants to be fucked. Yeah, yeah. And there's even a thing where they're like, that's gonna be the scandalous part of this movie. That's what they're gonna be talked about, that's what's gonna be talked about, that's what's gonna live on after this.
SPEAKER_01They're like they have to know why she's with that.
SPEAKER_03This guy, and it's because she wants to be fucked, and he does it well, and he's passionate and you know. And so to do that, this sex scene's gonna have to look as realistic as real as possible. It wasn't, yeah, but it's gonna have to look like it was real.
SPEAKER_01And who who better to do that than two people who were married and were in love?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and had a very passionate marriage. Yeah, that was one of the things that kept Evelyn there, too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they know how each other's bodies move, they know what it feels like to be wanted and to when they're the same.
SPEAKER_03When they're acting this out, they have the real life experience to draw on. Right.
SPEAKER_01And she said after it was over, she goes in her dressing room and cries.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it wasn't because of any feelings she had for Dawn, but because she knows that this is gonna kill.
SPEAKER_03And she knew going into this, when she agreed to do this, she knew Celia wasn't gonna like it. Right. And she chose to wait till after it was done, because sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
SPEAKER_00That's well, sometimes.
SPEAKER_03Sometimes, not in this case, maybe, but sometimes. But um, she chooses, she could go and explain herself. And Evelyn's not the type of woman to ask permission. She's never gonna ask permission, and that is one also one of the things I respect the hell out of about her.
SPEAKER_01But you shouldn't consider your partners, you should consider respect when it comes to things like that during your partner.
SPEAKER_03Because everyone was gonna watch this movie and be convinced that those two actors are actually having sex having sex on that screen. Yeah, and how is that going to make Celia feel?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And especially knowing Celia's history with Evelyn and her attraction to men and with her ex and Don. That he she actually loved She actually loved, yeah. And so she chooses not to have a preemptive conversation. Then she tries to sell it when she does have the conversation. Like, how would you feel if this happened? Not it's already happened. Yeah. And then Celia, for a second, I think she's gonna She tries. She tries and then she fails. Yeah. And she can't be okay with it.
SPEAKER_01She's like, I can't be okay with it. I'm trying really hard, but I can't be okay with it.
SPEAKER_03As an actress, this is what you should do in this role. I know this is what you should do for this movie. As your partner, I can't be okay. Get over it. Yeah. And then Evelyn has to be like, Well, I already did it. And she's gone. Yeah. So she leaves again.
SPEAKER_01Out the door. Yeah. And this time, the first time they broke up, Evelyn did not ask for forgiveness or beg or plead or follow. She just let her go. She just let her go. This time, Evelyn is like, No, you're the love of my life. Goes to her hotel room, bangs on the door, calls her. She's gonna walk in by. Begging, begging her to come back. And she's like, No, you're never gonna change. You're always gonna choose fame over me, and I'm not okay with that. And I'm done. Done, done.
SPEAKER_03And so she's still with Harry at this point when all this happens.
SPEAKER_01Um she gets to focus on Connor, which is fine. Yeah, she gets to be a mom. Harry is still mourning John for a very long time.
SPEAKER_03Very much so. So she's taking care of Harry in a lot of ways, but her and Max, the director, kind of have a still friends, and there's a spark there. He again is like, oh, I love Evelyn Hugo.
SPEAKER_01And if he sends, he sends flowers and says, Marry me, leave him, marry me. And she's like, But I'm with Harry. And he's like, Harry's a homosexual. Homexual, I know that. It's fine. I'm from France, whatever. We don't care there. We have those over there. Yeah, anyway. But but you're you know, like marry me. Marry me. Yeah. And so she does. She talks to Harry. Yeah, she talks to Harry and he's like, if you think that you've got a chance at love with somebody else, then nothing has to change. Like we can both live in our family. Still have our family. We can still have our family, nothing has to change. Everything's good. We can raise our daughter. Yeah. And so because again, he's the most magical person on earth. God.
SPEAKER_03Even through his grief, he's like, please go find love again. I support you. I'm here for you. I'm your best friend. So she goes and she marries Max, and it is Mick Reva the sequel. Um he is in love with the idea of being in love with Evelyn Hugo. He is not in love with the person. The person, the actual person. He keeps calling her Evelyn Hugo. She's like, you can just call me Evelyn. Yeah. He's like, but Evelyn Hugo.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like how I can't do a French accent, but whatever. Yeah, I'm not gonna try that either. But like how how will people look at me when I'm on the plane with Evelyn Hugo? And like, let's go back to the city. Let's like it.
SPEAKER_03And they stay married for a little bit.
SPEAKER_01I mean, yeah, for a little bit.
SPEAKER_03But Oh Celia just can't stay away. She just keeps creeping back in. So they start writing. That's what happens with the love of your laugh. Oh, you know? And this is probably like the most real they've been with each other because I think at this point in her life, Evelyn's like, I don't care. I've had I've done all the things, I've won the awards, I've got the fame, I've got all the fortune. Yeah. And I just want to love you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so she they start writing letters. So Evelyn writes her a letter, and Celia responds with a letter and is just like, How what did she say? It was so beautiful. She said, uh, hearing from you feels like gasping for air after being underwater.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh. Oh my god. And she's like, We are suckers from so for some romantic letters.
SPEAKER_01Give me a love letter. You know what I mean? Every day. Oh my God. It's so beautiful. But she's like, how did we make such a mess out of this? You know, like I even even though we haven't spoken, I I can still hear your voice in my head every day. You know, like obviously the love is not diminished at all. And then they talk on the phone.
SPEAKER_03And then Evelyn, they make a date.
SPEAKER_01She's like, just I'll meet me for lunch. Meet me for dinner. It was dinner. And because Celia's like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. You know, like I want to see you, but I'm not sure. You know, and she's like, just dinner. It's just dinner. It's just dinner. We're just gonna have dinner.
SPEAKER_03It's fine, like platonic dinner. And she has all these letters that they've exchanged at this point. Right. Basically talking about how much they love each other, but also being real about like we still have all the same issues we've always had. Yeah, exactly. And uh she's like, should I I want to take they're like her prize possessions? She keeps them pristine, they're all in the envelope. Yeah. And she's like, I take them with me. And that no, I'm gonna leave them here. I'm gonna take them with me. And finally at the last minute, she takes them out of her suitcase and she leaves them in her closet. Right. And she goes down to get in the cab to go to fly to LA to have dinner with Celia. And at the last second before she gets in the cab, she's like, No, I'm gonna take the letters with me. And she goes back upstairs, and stupid Max is in the closet throwing all the letters around. First of all, that broke my heart a little bit. Yeah. Because these were like her love letters, and he's just like tossing them around like they're trash. Yeah. And calls her a dyke, and I'm just like, ugh. And number one, she's bisexual. Number two, fuck off. Fuck off, guy. Like you get out of my show. You never loved her. You loved the idea of her exactly get beat.
SPEAKER_01He's not even mad that she's leaving him.
SPEAKER_03He's just mad that he can't be married to Evelyn Hugo anymore.
SPEAKER_01It's like all about his fucking ego.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And so that they're they're done. But she goes to Celia. She goes to Celia. We find out that Celia is sick. They all like, you know, chain smoked and drank and were did not live the healthiest of lives. I'm sure there was lots of red meat and butter or whatever. Sounds great.
SPEAKER_01I just don't want the cigarettes. But but she has emphysema, and her doctors told her she has years to live, but not many. Yeah. And she's decided, yeah, it's gonna get worse. And she's decided that she wants to move to Spain. And she wants Evelyn to move to Spain with her and live out the rest of the year.
SPEAKER_03And Evelyn's like, how can I do that? Everyone's gonna know. And Celia's like, Marry my brother.
SPEAKER_01Marry my brother. It's fine.
SPEAKER_03So husband number seven, Robert Jameson, Celia's brother.
SPEAKER_01Because he knows who she is and he knows that she's gay. And he knows that she's sick, and he accepts her for what she is, and he is uh uh a man ho. Yeah, he he is what's a better word for that? He's a playboy. Yeah, he's a playboy, he's a he's a he likes the ladies. He's not gonna settle down. He's never gonna settle down. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And Celia wants some sort of settled life for him, and I think more of like she's thinking after she's gone, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Kind of thing. Also, if she was gonna live the rest of her life with Evelyn, Evelyn's not gonna be able to inherit her fortune or her finances. And so if she's married to Robert, Robert will inherit Celia's fortune. Which means it goes to it. Which inherently means it goes to Evelyn. Evelyn gets, you know, when she's gonna be able to get it.
SPEAKER_03And I mean, again, think about being in a time where you have to worry about that. Yeah. Where you have to worry about what happens to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03If my partner gets sick or I get sick or I mean, honestly, in this atmosphere that we're in right now, I worry about that all the time. All the time, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Still, and I can't imagine like we have laws protecting us now, and then like politics. Not forever. And I'm like, oh, and you know, uh, but anyway, yeah, I understand the the feeling of and it was a very smart idea.
SPEAKER_03I feel like this was one of Celia's better ideas throughout the whole thing was marry my brother so that you can have all of my estate and he's taken care of, you know, you'll watch out for him when I'm gone. He can still go do his thing. Listen, he all those little girls in that town that they moved to loved him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So the only problem was that Harry and Connor had to be on board. Right. And and the problem with Harry being on board was that he had fallen in love. Fallen in love again. Which we wanted from him.
SPEAKER_03He was so heartbroken. He was so heartbroken.
SPEAKER_01Overdrawn for years, years.
SPEAKER_03And he was like, still was drinking very heavily at this point. Gotten a gotten better. Gotten better. But he had fallen in love and he could not. His new love worked in Hollywood and he couldn't ask them to move to Spain. And this was his chance at love again. And Elvin Evelyn wasn't going to deny that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she's like, I can't move to Spain. I can't move to it. Or either, or Harry was like, I can't move to Spain. She was like, Well, if you're not going, I'm not going to spend it. We can't go. We can't go.
SPEAKER_03You know, and good for them. Like, that's that's support. That's love. That's support. And so Harry had found love again, and Evelyn doesn't it doesn't really say who he who it's with. And Evelyn is going to talk to him. She's going over there.
SPEAKER_01And Harry proposes again to have his new love marry Celia. Right. Like so they're going to do this whole thing. We're going to do the John Braverman thing all over here. Reboot. And then his his you know, his new love is like, I can't do that. My life is in Hollywood and I'm staying here.
SPEAKER_03And yeah. And so Evelyn's going over there. She's in like a taxi cab, and the cab pulls up on a very gruesome car wreck. Yeah. This car is basically wrapped around a pole. And Evelyn figures out that it's Harry. And she jumps out and runs over. He's in the driver's seat. She can smell the alcohol on him. And he is in very bad shape. Yeah. And she looks over and the passenger is dead. Is dead. And she's assuming that this is Harry's new love. And he is now deceased.
SPEAKER_01And he was a black man.
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah, he was a black man. And so Evelyn, being the I've got to fix everything and protect everybody's image. She's like, I have to protect his image and his reputation, gets the help of the taxi, the young little taxi driver, aspiring actor, because they were talking about and enlists him to help reset the scene, puts the passenger in the driver's seat, um, pulls Harry out. They take him to a hospital, like anonymously, kind of, so that nobody knows that he was part of that wreck. And he ends up passing away.
SPEAKER_01Which honestly was one of my biggest heartbreaks in this entire book.
SPEAKER_03She gets to go say goodbye to him. And I I I can't. Like the fact if you can read that scene and not get tore up, please don't ever tell me about it. Because you're I I worry about it. Yeah, like that's dead inside. One of the I'm not usually a crier when it comes to like books or movies. Now you give me like a compilation of like military people coming home, like reuniting with their families and dogs getting rescued. Yeah, I'll just cry all day long. Yeah. But um, like books and movies don't generally get me. It takes a lot. This book over and over again. Yeah. Even on the reread, over and over again. And this scene was.
SPEAKER_01That's the whole thing. I had forgotten that Harry died, and so he just died anew all over again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he just and he absolutely ruined my life. But his life is just turning back around and he had found love, and now all of this happens. So Harry dies. Connor is a mess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she's alcohol, drugs.
SPEAKER_03Oh, she's going crazy.
SPEAKER_01Got caught in a menage à toi. Randomly. She's also like 14. So that shit out of it.
SPEAKER_03Well, but they're also I think they're living uh in New York where and this time in New York, this was before New York kind of got cleaned up a little again. So I don't know. But I'm like, she's at the discotheque at 14, snorting Coke. What? I mean, when you're Evelyn Hugo's daughter, I guess you can do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_04Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03But so Evelyn's like, I gotta get her out of here. And so Celia and her are like, let's go to let's go to Spain. Now there's nothing stopping us. And they do, and she marries Robert, and Connor ends up thriving, thriving, and kind of coming back around. Their relationship mends itself. And she really loves Robert too. She sees him as a father figure. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Not to replace Harry, but he she likes him and they get along really well.
SPEAKER_03They get along well. He loves her. I mean, I think she's the kid that he never knew that he wanted. So he kind of got to fulfill that like stepdad role, which was great. Yeah. And Celia and her, this is probably their best time together. Yeah, honestly. She gets sick, like sicker and sicker. And she ends up passing away in Evelyn's arms.
SPEAKER_01They had 10 years together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And um, I mean, can't I can't imagine.
SPEAKER_01I can't imagine.
SPEAKER_03I can't either.
SPEAKER_01Even knowing it, I think, I think knowing it, like there's that question if someone could tell you your future could tell you the day that you died, would you want to know? If I knew when it was gonna happen, would would everything that I do be so much more substantial in my mind because I knew that there was like an expiration date? Or is it better not knowing and just trying to live every day at its fullest? That it could end at any time. Yeah. But having an expiration date with her, like knowing that there's only years and like seeing her deteriorate and knowing that the end was near, I feel like they probably did spend the best years of their lives together because there were no expectations and they could be free. Yeah, yeah, and be together. And nobody was talking about them because they were in some like random seaside village.
SPEAKER_03They had done they had achieved all their goals, all their dreams. Yeah. And this was the last one, and that was to live happily ever after together. And they did that throughout all of this. Again, this is Evelyn telling her life story to Monique. I do find it interesting, and we'll come full circle as to why Monique is part of this. But Monique almost to me was the other main character, but was not very fleshed out in that way. Yeah, it we didn't get a ton. She was going through her own divorce at that time, which I did not care about. We didn't uh give two shits about her ex and the fact that he took her coffee table. No, fuck that coffee table.
SPEAKER_01I do, I did like her. She she learns a lot from Evelyn throughout her story arc because she does learn to stand up for herself, she does learn to find her voice, she does learn to ask for the things that she deserves and that she wants. And I think that that's that was really the whole point of their relationship, except for the twist. Yeah, that was the point of the relationship. But I think that that is why Monique struggles at the end, whether or not she likes Evelyn or or not, because she did learn so many positive things from her throughout their time together.
SPEAKER_03She really helped Monique realize her strength and be able to grab life and get whatever you want out of it.
SPEAKER_01Because her husband comes back and is like, let's just give this another go. I feel like we're throwing in the towel chin. And she's like, No, I think that divorce is the right thing. And that would not have been what she would have said if she hadn't met Evelyn.
SPEAKER_03And it turns out that he is just for the sake of not failing. It's about failure for them, not saving their marriage because they love each other, but just they don't want to admit failure. Right. And Evelyn taught her that that's not the case, that's not what that means. We do also find out in towards the end of this, she's auctioning off the dresses with Christie's to raise money for breast cancer awareness because that's what her daughter died of.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, she loses Connor, which is awful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and breast cancer, as we all know, can be hereditary. So she is also dying of breast cancer. She just found out, yeah, got diagnosed with breast cancer. Been the catalyst for her wanting to tell this story is because she realized that she doesn't have a lot of time left and she wants the truth out there, like we said. Uh, she does commit to the cover story for Vivant, or however you say it. I don't even remember now. She does a photo shoot and everything, and there's a really God, this one hit me in the feels too. During the photo shoot, Monique is is watching Evelyn be in like her peak environment, right? And she says her dress is low cut, revealing her still ample cleavage, and it occurs to me that it is the very thing that made her that will be the thing to finally take her down. And I was just like, this book won't stop punching me in the gut. Like, can we not listen? I just Taylor Jenkins read. Did you intend to destroy us with this book? Was it? Did you sit down to write a book that you're like, I'm gonna decimate every person who reads this?
SPEAKER_01What human emotion can I poke at?
SPEAKER_03Every one of them. Yeah. Um The Twist. We've talked about it.
SPEAKER_01Listen, okay, you've listened to this whole thing. I'm gonna give you a disclaimer again. If you don't want to know what this is, this is the last time. This is the last time that I'm gonna tell you turn this shit off.
SPEAKER_03Stop, stop it right now. The twist. So we've heard little snippets throughout the book that Monique has mentioned that her father passed away. When she was very young.
SPEAKER_01When she was very young, he was a wonderful man. He he she has nothing but wonderful memories. Yeah. Her mother and her talk about him all the time. He's this wonderful man. He used to work at Hollywood. He was a photographer. Yeah, at the he used to work in Hollywood and he was a photographer, and he loved his job.
SPEAKER_03Um, there's also when Evelyn comes upon the car wreck uh that Harry was in, uh, there was a piece of paper in Harry's jacket that she quickly she doesn't read, but she quickly pulls it out and stuffs it in like her bag or something because again, she's trying to get rid of evidence. Um, and that letter is from Harry's Love. It's written by Harry's Love to Harry, telling him that he can't go to Spain with him and why. And it's because he will not leave his wife and he will not leave his daughter, Monique. The man in the car, Harry's Love, was Monique's father. Oh my god! Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03And this whole time Monique has thought that her father died drunk driving. Died driving drunk.
SPEAKER_01And which was so unlike him. Yeah, that was out of character. And it didn't change the way that she viewed him. I'm sure that she had some anger, like, you you did this.
SPEAKER_03You made this decision and it took you away from me. Yeah. Yeah. But the letter, the letter that Evelyn ends up giving the letter to Monique, and Monique reads, and it has blood stains on it. Yeah. It has blood, it has Harry's bloodstains on it. It says that she's thought about mailing it and all the like the different ways that she wanted to find her and give her this letter. But the letter, again, is one of the most beautiful love letters because it professes his unwavering love for Harry.
SPEAKER_01I've never I never knew that I could love like this. You are the love. I love you.
SPEAKER_03But I love my wife. But I love you.
SPEAKER_01We have an amazing and I love my daughter, and I love our life together.
SPEAKER_03My wife is my best friend. The way Monique's mother, Monique's mom and dad were Evelyn and Harry. Yeah. They were platonic soulmates in the fact that they were best friends.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And he even says in the letter, I I can't leave her because I would still wake up every day wanting to ask her what she's thinking about. What she's thinking about get her opinion on something. Or want to see her or just be with her. Yeah. And he's like, I can't do that. And we have this beautiful life together, and I love that.
SPEAKER_01And I love going to Spain with you.
SPEAKER_03But I'm not going to leave this. And Evelyn's whole intention was wanting to make sure Monique knew how much her father loved her. And of course, she's so mad at Evelyn. Yeah, she says, I hate you. I hate you for.
SPEAKER_01And Evelyn says, Isn't that such a great feeling? There's no confusion in that feeling.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And Evelyn knows the whole time she's doing this, she's telling Monique, You're gonna hate me at the end. You're gonna hate me at the end. You're gonna hate me. And Monique's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then at the end, she's like, Oh yeah, I hate you. I hate you. Yeah. But I also think I kind of like you and respect you. There's also a beautiful moment between because Monique's mom comes to visit around the time that she finds this out.
SPEAKER_01And she does not tell her.
SPEAKER_03She does not tell her. She's she's not sure that she ever will tell her mom or share that letter with her mom. But she does ask her mom about her marriage to her father. And she even said her mom, I think her mom knew at least on some level. Because her mom's like, we did not have a passionate marriage.
SPEAKER_01No, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But we loved each other deeply.
SPEAKER_01He was my best friend, he was my soulmate. Like I loved being with him. Yeah. You know, like he was he was my person.
SPEAKER_03But we did not have a passionate marriage in a traditional sense. And again, I just think that that was so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01I do too. And honestly, like that's just another example of of how a relationship can be. If that is what fulfills you and you're okay with that, yeah. And you don't, you don't have to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_03It doesn't matter if you're yeah, if your relationship or your marriage, whatever fits a normal box of what society thinks a marriage should be. That's okay. If it works for you and your partner, then that is nobody else can question it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like it's nobody else's place to question it.
SPEAKER_03It is just as valid as every other relationship out there.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03So, and that's I think the biggest thing out of this book is just be your genuine authentic self.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And fuck what everybody else thinks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, Evelyn Hugo would say the same. She'd agree with you. Yeah. 100%. Well, I absolutely love this book. Yeah. If you can't tell, we're not we love it. We have talked so long. I'm this, I'm not gonna apologize because Evelyn Hugo would not apologize. No. But we we could continue to talk about this all night, but we're not gonna, because we've kept you long enough. Please go read this book if you please go read it. It's so beautiful. I'm talking to you, Courtney. You gotta get past the fact. Yeah, we're talking to you, Courtney. There's not that much spice, I will say. There is there is a couple there's passion. There are a couple of minutes where it's like it's like sexy, but there's not like it's not smut. There's nowhere to smut. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, okay? So if you're in it just for the smut, then this book might not be for you, but I'm telling you, you're missing out if you don't give it a chance. Yeah. Courtney. Courtney. Everybody in Huntsville, go check out Allen books because they're fantastic. Yeah. We love you, Courtney. But read this book. We'd also read this book. Read a fucking book. But yeah, so I want to end on a quote that is at the end of the book. I thought it was really beautiful. It's Monique talking to Evelyn, and she says, 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 ever talks about when they talk about you are the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo. And her answer was quintessential Evelyn. No, she told me, because they are just husbands. I am Evelyn Hugo. And anyway, I think once people know the truth, they'll be much more interested in my wife.
SPEAKER_03Oh, if that's not the most Evelyn Hugo line of the entire book. That's her final like fuck you. Yeah. Like fuck the husbands. I think everyone's gonna be much more interested in my wife.
SPEAKER_01100%. Oh, yes. Okay. Well, this book is fantastic. We love that you're all here. Thank you so much for listening to us.
SPEAKER_03Also, come back next month.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna read. Here we go again by Allison Cochrane. Yeah. And it will be our 12th episode. Year, our one year. Our one year? That's okay. Yeah, we set out to just do 12 episodes. We were like, we're gonna do a year. We're gonna do one episode a month, and it's gonna be great for the entire year. We're gonna do a year, we're gonna do one episode a month for an entire year and see how we feel about it. And I'm feeling pretty good about it. I'm having a good time.
SPEAKER_03I'm feeling real good.
SPEAKER_01So if you guys aren't tired of us, we're gonna keep doing it. We're gonna go into year two. So excited. Thank you so much for being here. And we love you. We love you. See ya.