Fun facts about Eva (or not-so-fun ones) I got out of this book.
- Eva was totally willing to kiss/hug/be in contact with ill people even if it was risky to herself. She was more worried about offending them than protecting herself from illness.
- The book is pretty blunt about how Eva picked her various lovers for career advantage and/or financial support in between jobs.
- One catty remark is that she was an expensive mistress because she was always sick.
- She apparently had a dirty mouth and "insulted only important men."
- Eva playing Catherine of Russia on the radio is described as "a daily pleasure, this nasal voice who played the empress with rural tango accents! It was hilarious."
- Peron: "He was a forty-eight-year-old widower who loved young girls. Evita, who was twenty-four, could still be mistaken for a doll, and Peron was accomplished in the role of the paternal male." Ewwwww.
- Peron has "A certain stoutness, just enough to make the women swoon." WTF? The author also seems to think he was quite hot on a horse.
- Someone says, "Eva was asexual...he too was not very sexual. This marriage united two wills, wo passions for power. It was not a marriage for love."
Waaaaaaaait a minute, all I hear about is how Eva is such a whore and sleeping with dudes for money/jobs/power, but she's asexual? Peron is having teenage girls as mistresses, but HE's asexual?!?!
- It's the author's opinion that Peron was basically incapable of love and she says things like "Peron certainly loved Eva, at least within the limits of his capacity for love....he had feelings for her that were close to love."
- Eva considered herself a "dual personality," according to her designer. She said as an actress, he could give her sequins and poufs, but as "what the Big Shot wants me to be, a political figure," she got suits.
- Eva did find Peron annoying and would say so. "The more the real Peron irritated her, the more the ideal Peron claimed her heart. This is the Peron she loved to the point of adoration and sacrifice. It is her gratitude to this Peron, the redeemer who had chosen, purified, and saved her, that drove Eva to a cancerous self-destruction, all while she was singing canticles." The author thinks Eva loved his image more than "his thick body and his chorizo sandwiches."
- Peron on Jews after WWII: "If the Jews are living here, I can neither kill them nor chase them away. The only solution is to let them work within our community." Which is to say, if the Germans couldn't take them out... OY.
- "When his army colleagues, with quivering mustaches and severe brows, explained to him that his liaison with an actress was not highly regarded, Peron opened his penguin arms and responded, "What, would you prefer that I have a relationship with an actor?" LOL.
- "for Evita, jewelry was reassurance, visible proof that she was loved. Jewels calmed her as food calms others. Since she could not eat for fear she would get fat, she binged on shiny candy: mint emeralds, strawberry rubies....Evita tasted her jewels; she actually sucked on them and bit them."
- When someone tried to tell her to wear less jewelry, she said, "The poor like to see me be beautiful. They do not want to be protected by a poorly dressed woman. You see, they dream about me. How can I let them down?"
- A tailor of hers got sent out to find her a "simple brown and green necklace" to wear to a Spanish Embassy party. He found one, Evita nibbled on it...and it turned out to be PAINTED NOODLES that turned her mouth green and brown. She ripped the dude a new one after that. He hadn't noticed.
- For those who doubt that she loved him, there's a letter she wrote him before flying saying that she idolized him even though she may not be able to show him all she feels. "I have fought many hardships in my life for my ambition to be somebody. I suffered a great deal, but then you came along and you made me so happy that I feel like I am dreaming."
- Eva wanted "to have a place in history." She also claimed to be unmoved by art, but "I am only moved by the people." Doing things for the poor is what made her cry.
- Eva would get up in the middle of the night and classify and pack donated objects to the poor. She'd also check on people in the middle of the night to see if they were okay. She got 12k letters a day, like Santa. "Those people are my work. I am nothing, my work is everything." She'd give them more than they asked for, remembering what it was like to be poor herself. She'd bring kids to the house and clean them up too. She'd kiss lepers and other illnesses and caught other people's lice. "I want to help people today, not tomorrow. And that is how I want to die."
- Most people agree that Peron was avoiding his dying wife and freaked the hell out when she made her way to his room one night, yelling "Get this out of here!" shudders People wouldn't tell her she was dying, either.
- I'm not going to recount the extreme grossness of what people did to Eva's body. Like EWWWWWWW.
Overall, I thought this was interesting, but I've been in the show "Evita" lately and I have other research nerds telling me fun facts about Eva's lobotomy, Peron's HPV giving 2 out of 3 wives cancer, all the body moving shenanigans. And I'm all um....I feel like this author perhaps left out some dirt here? That might have been good to know? I also think she sometimes has some really odd/opposite takes on things, like Eva being a lady who dated around a lot for money but didn't like sex at the same time, and whether or not Eva and Peron were an actual love match. Huh? So I think that's weird.
But that said, I feel like she's portrayed pretty well on good and bad points for the most part, especially how she felt about helping the poor. Despite Che yelling, "SHE DID NOTHING FOR YEARS!" in Evita, I disagree. I think she earned her spot in history, honestly.
Overall, I think I'm giving it 3.5 stars.
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