The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Week 3: Husbands #2 & #3 — Don Adler and Mick Riva
Read the chapters covering Evelyn's marriages to Don Adler and Mick Riva in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Previewing Week 3 of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Read 3 of 7 discussion questions below. Unlock the complete 11-week guide when you’re ready.
Two very different marriages follow — one built on violence and image management, one built on chemistry and self-destruction — and together they reveal the particular dangers Hollywood poses to women.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Don Adler is charming, powerful, and ultimately abusive. How does Reid pace the revelation of his cruelty? At what point did you sense the marriage was dangerous, and did the novel confirm that instinct sooner or later than you expected?
2.Evelyn stays in the marriage with Don Adler longer than she might have. What calculations — professional, social, financial — keep her there, and how does Reid ask us to hold the tension between condemning those calculations and understanding them?
3.The Don Adler section is one of the novel's most explicit engagements with the way Hollywood silences women. How does the studio system's machinery — publicists, contracts, manufactured image — function as an instrument of control over Evelyn's body and story?