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I squint into the icy sunlight. The path sparkles with a thin layer of frost. Everything is hard and bright, like I’m looking from inside a diamond”. while this seems like the classic ‘young twenty-something woman starts dating the older richer man’ story (which we all know and love), mellors’ unique narrative style offers a fresh new take. cleo and frank’s relationship is the strand which runs through everyone else’s lives, their tumultuous up and downs bleeding into the lives of their circle of friends and family. in essence it is a love story, albeit told through the eyes of others. The recently released “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” by NYU alum Coco Mellor has taken social media by storm, particularly TikTok, where a hashtag for the book has garnered more than 3.1 million views on videos using it. Set in New York City, the novel opens with an endearing elevator meet-cute between protagonists Cleo and Frank. Frank is the 40-something-year-old owner of an advertising firm and Cleo is a 24-year-old aspiring artist from England. Right off the bat, Frank and Cleo’s electric dynamic pulls readers in . Frank presents Cleo with the possibility of happiness, artistic freedom, and the chance to apply for a Green Card. Their spontaneous marriage has unforeseen consequences that alter not only their lives but also the lives of those around them. Cleopatra and Frankenstein Book Review: My Opinion
New York City at the start of the 21st-century – pre-financial crisis, pre-Trump, pre-Covid – is captured with near-devotional lushness in this nostalgic debut. It’s an urban playground that struggling painter Cleo, 24 years old and stylishly British, is on the brink of being exiled from, her student visa due to expire in mere months, when she meets Frank, a fortysomething ad agency owner with a nice line in elevator chitchat. They wed on a whim to calamitous effect on both sides. In terms of depth, this novel is more Jay McInerney than Hanya Yanagihara, but Mellors proves herself a poetic chronicler of inky gloom as well as twinkly surfaces. Unattached: Essays on Singlehood An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. the whole younger woman/old man is a very tired hetero dynamic. maybe if the characters concerned are nuanced, interesting, or believable, maybe then i will bring myself to read yet another age-gap & vaguely toxic hetero romance but cleo and frank are not it. their first meeting is ridiculous, ludicrous even. of course she's beautiful and has a british accent. her hair is described as 'golden', her face, a 'performance', her clothes and makeup give her a vintage yet distinctive aura (i made the mistake of looking up coco mellors and could no longer divorce the author from the character...and i happen to find self-inserts cringe at the best of times). cleo has long fingers, smokes, she's artistic. i could keep on going...these ppl are boring and the author's attempts to make them into rooney-esque figures, well, tis' cringe. my life is too short and precious to me to waste my time on this earth reading bland stories. It's the latest in a string of literary fiction pieces that I've read that feel aspirational to that title. It's giving aggressive general fiction.
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Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. Two parts contentment. One part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet. Mellors weaves an enticing tale of companionship and conflict within Cleo and Frank’s marriage. They’re from different walks of life and different generations, but both have demons nipping at their heels. Cleo is dealing with her mother’s passing and her strained relationship with her father. Frank faces similar struggles, with an estranged father and a mother who provided him with a less-than-healthy idea of love. As Frank turns to alcohol to numb his problems, Cleo grows frustrated with his frequent substance use. Despite their problems, the characters still feel deeply considered and relatable. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is definitely a character driven book rather than one with a fast paced plot. Neither Cleo nor Frank are particularly likeable characters and I found them to be quite shallow and pretentious, especially at the beginning. Many of the people in Cleo's life are also somehow both unrealistic and uninteresting, like her drug addicted and toxic gay best friend (cliché, cliché) best friend Quentin and her brief love interest Anders (an older man who sleeps with younger women and doesn't view them as people, how original).
A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration. Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice’ PANDORA SYKES, author of How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right There were very many characters in this book that I didn't like, but also I wasn't supposed to, but also even when I'm not supposed to I usually do anyway, often more than when I AM supposed to.While the novel centers on a relationship between two lovers, it is ultimately more about loneliness than love. “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” is about two people dealing with familial issues and their own demons, who as a consequence latch on to one another to gain a sense of belonging. There’s nothing wrong with writing books that are ripe for adaptation. Literary fiction is full of critically adored authors who hustled other jobs to pay the bills, and novels turned into series have given us some of our greatest television. But the type of enlightenment presented in certain novels, in which easy access to money makes chasing one’s art a matter only of finding oneself, ignores a world on fire with chaos and inequality. And it tends not to make for great TV either. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. The novel then jumps ahead a few months to Frank and Cleo getting married following a whirlwind romance. The novel continues jumping through several months as the couple’s enigmatic connection unravels, affecting the lives of those around them. Cleopatra and Frankenstein offers a shrewd take on the muddle and messiness of modern relationships; and Mellor does a great job of painting a fragmented world full of choice and chaos, and the search for true happiness. A love letter to New York, to the chaos of finding one’s feet, to the intricacies of waning relationships and to what it is to be human, Cleopatra and Frankenstein will no doubt cultivate a legion of loyal fans waiting for Mellors’ next move. Buy Cleopatra and Frankenstein from Bookshop.org, Book Depository or Waterstones. Cleopatra and Frankenstein Summary
The more I read, the more I actually wanted to read. The characters had more depth as the book progressed and while I can’t say I warmed completely to the Cleo and Frank, I began to understand them better. What is it? It’s this chilling, anxiety-inducing moroseness. I want to strangle the characters because they’re so awkward and annoying and they’re sabotaging their own relationships. But, also, I care. I care so much. It’s a hard thing to explain to sane humans.
I read this because everyone was comparing it to Sally Rooney, which I guess is appealing to me. But it brings all the stuff that irks me about Rooney— hipster millennials having endless navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual conversations about themselves and the universe —and misses out the key component that, for me, makes Rooney as engaging an author as she is irritating. Cleopatra and Frankenstein” is a compelling read for reasons beyond the core dynamic. The narration alternates between side characters’ perspectives, giving a chance for readers to construct their own account of the central romance. Some such narrators include Zoe, Frank’s sister; Santiago, a mutual friend whose party led to Frank and Cleo’s meet-cute; Anders, a former Scandinavian model and Frank’s best friend; Quentin, Cleo’s best friend; and Eleanor, one of Frank’s employees at the advertising firm. Marital bliss proves to be a fleeting thingy for these two. Sure, dining in chic restaurants, and taking in the NYC art scene is fine for a while, but before long, things to begin to unravel. Cleo suffers from depression, and feels neglected. Frank drinks way too much, and may actually be falling for one of his employees. (Funny and refreshing, Eleanor, a down-to-earth gal far removed from Frank's more upscale world. I fell for her, too. Hard.) Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide.
update: dropping this to 4.5 because there is one thing that bugs me too much to leave this at a perfect 5. but i still love you eleanor!!! For me, this is a book of characters. The writing is lovely, but in relation to the people it creates and summons. There isn't much of a plot to speak of, beyond the shifting dynamics and relationships built between them, namely Cleo and Frank, a semi-green-card marriage built mostly on passion and age difference, and those around them: Frank's younger half-sister, Zoë; Frank's friends, Anders, and another more boring and half-hearted inclusion whose name I don't remember; Cleo's best friend Quentin; Zoë's best friend Audrey; and finally, ELEANOR.
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The above excerpt is a ‘hint’….that what we’ll continue to read is….a PERFORMANCE of the greatest sentences, the greatest off-the-wall absurdities, the greatest exaggerated character descriptions…. Rooney has this way of bothering me. I want her characters to figure it out because for some weird reason I am invested in them. Neither Cleo nor Frank inspired those same feelings in me. From their first ludicrous encounter to the end, I found the pair simply irritating, nothing more. And all of the side characters serve to hammer home the book's whole point about how a relationship can affect those around the couple. None of them felt real or believable. Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Fiction, Health, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Mental Health, New York, Romance I hate Cleo and her goofy artsy poetic depression very much. I find attempts at making violent mental illness beautiful to be very gross and in poor taste, at best, and devastatingly unrealistic at worse. I, like every vaguely creative young person, have multiple diagnoses, but my brain chemistry failures never include installing art with my self harmed body at the center for my loved ones to find, I will tell you that.
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