Cleopatra and Frankenstein: ‘Move over Sally Rooney: this is the hottest new book’ - Sunday Times

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Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that’s Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse. I love her so much I don't know what to do with myself. Her life, her jokes, her work, her allusions. Her mom and dad, her brother, her friends. Her house and her train rides and - I am genuinely getting worked up and I have to stop. 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. This is Mellors’ debut novel, and it’s clear that she knows a world built on flash and substances (but not substance) is bound to crumble. She has written some extraordinary sentences and shows a great talent for dialogue. And she cannily sets Gen X artists who found a way to combine art with commerce against millennials who were raised to grasp at shiny objects that wound up beyond their reach. Her party scenes play out the inevitable clash: youth and money, mutually envious. Redemption for some of her characters will come with the recognition that the envy is misplaced and that developing a sense of self means reaching for higher-hanging fruit.

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.while the book jumps around between a cast of characters running full-speed around new york, they all feel fleshed out and their perspectives are equally as absorbing as the one before, with witty humour laced throughout. along with being a tender and painfully realistic character study, the book provides explorations of love, marriage, desire, friendship, art, addiction, and mental illness. but most of all, it seems that the book is about the journey to discovering who you really are and what you really want - a journey which seems to never really be complete. I sometimes loved, and sometimes hated all the characters in this one: the title pair who marry mere months after meeting, and their eccentric circle of pals. the book perfectly captures the messiness and complexities of relationships in the modern world, especially what happens when the honeymoon phase starts to wear off and reality sets in. mellors’ exploration of relationships also feels strikingly contemporary - in a fragmented world full of such choice and chaos, it’s becoming increasingly harder to figure out what you want, what you desire, to decide what it will take to bring ‘true happiness’, a notoriously obscure concept which everyone is still desperately trying to grasp anyway. When I first started reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I really struggled to get into it at the beginning. I think this was mostly due to not warming to the main characters. It all just felt a bit superficial and pretentious but the more I read, I think that was actually the point.

Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Fiction, Health, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Mental Health, New York, Romance Frank, though he is a workaholic alcoholic with a younger wife and thereby also a cliché, somehow pulls off the grand accomplishment of being consistently intriguing to read about, as does his very annoying sister Zoë and her rarely present friend Audrey. Cleo — beautiful, blond and British — meets Frank — older, handsome and an award-winning advertising executive — in an elevator 90 minutes before the first day of 2007. They’ve both left a New Year’s Eve party. Their first conversation turns into an exchange of witty remarks that leads to dinner and flirtation. 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.yep, too much wit, swooning, tidbits, themes, dialogue, life quandaries, perplexing showy sentences, and cheesiness,…… Cleo, a 24-year-old artist from Britain, fled to New York City to start anew and explore her artistic pursuits. As her student visa nears expiration, she meets Frank, a self-made man twenty years her senior, who leads a life of luxury that is entirely foreign to Cleo. Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last. 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. 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 .

I felt as a whole the mental health aspects, including addiction and depression were handled sensitively. If I was to be slightly critical, I felt Cleo’s depression was slightly glamourised. Beautiful, suicidal Cleo who no man could resist. 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.

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Everyone Frank knew was the greatest ‘something’ in the world. His half-sister Zoe was the greatest actor, his best friend Anders was the greatest art director and amateur soccer player, and Cleo, well, Cleo was the most talented painter, the deepest thinker, the most beautiful woman on earth. Why? Because Frank wouldn’t have married anyone else”. I found Cleopatra and Frankenstein to be a great debut by Coco Mellors and I’m excited to read what she writes next. You may also be interested in:

This is the only part of this book I genuinely and actively disliked. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was nowhere close to enough to get me to shut up about it. Two parts contentment. One part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet. PDF / EPUB File Name: Cleopatra_and_Frankenstein_-_Coco_Mellors.pdf, Cleopatra_and_Frankenstein_-_Coco_Mellors.epub 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”. 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.

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. The author offered different perspectives throughout the story, not just from Cleo and Frank, but from their friends and family members. It gave an insight into these characters’ motivations and feelings, as well as showing how they were perceived from the outside looking in. Where Zoe could be seen as flighty and irresponsible by her brother Frank, we realise that she’s actually quite vulnerable and scared. These insights made the characters feel more authentic and relatable. Cleopatra and Frankenstein Book Review: Summary the characters are cool, but I did hate eleanor. and I kiiiinda hated cleo but just because I know people like her are insufferable in real life. in books I love sad art bitches like cleo so whatever. everybody seems to love eleanor because she is down to earth and funny but to me she was so mediocre. MY OWN LIFE IS MEDIOCRE I DON’T NEED TO READ ABOUT MEDIOCRE PEOPLE. the fact that she gets it all (won’t say what) made me furious. like GO HOME TO YOUR MOM AND LEAVE MY CLEO ALONE. I stayed attached to my tracic awfully flawed heroine, I guess that’s my greek side in me, whatever¿ (GIVE ME MORE TRAGIC AWFUL HEROINES OKAY?) it’s just good people bore me, terrible people are more interesting in literature. and I love toxic love in books, movies whatever GIVE IT TO ME ALL. 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 I liked the writing style. It felt fresh and current but it was also full of almost surprising drops of wisdom. The story, though bleak in places, was full of tenderness and hope and I particularly enjoyed the ending. Cleopatra and Frankenstein Book Review: Characters