The New Life of Hugo Gardner

The New Life of Hugo Gardner

2020 • 224 pages

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Average rating3

15

After what Hugo considered a long and happy marriage, his wife abruptly divorces him. Hugo is in his eighties, and suddenly he must reconsider all the events of his life and reconstruct a new life for his last years.

Hugo was a disappointment. I was eagerly anticipating reading a story about a man in his last years of life. The character of Hugo was never clear to me. What was this character like? Why did his wife suddenly leave him? That seemed unclear. Why in his youth did he leave his girlfriend from another? Unclear. His actions in Paris also seem murky. His extremely active sex life seemed the oddest of all, more of a fantasy of an older writer, I thought.