If Manhattan were a drug, which one would it be? This is one of the profound questions raised by reading Coco Mellors’ tantalizing but blithe debut novel, “ Cleopatra and Frankenstein,” whose Manhattanites run on stimulants and drown in alcohol. Hers is a city of flash and fluttering movement, as if deliberately designed to distract its inhabitants (or those Mellors chooses to depict) from seeing that, beneath the surface, there’s no there there. 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 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. 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. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. PDF / EPUB File Name: Cleopatra_and_Frankenstein_-_Coco_Mellors.pdf, Cleopatra_and_Frankenstein_-_Coco_Mellors.epub 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.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.

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…. 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.

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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. 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 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.

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. 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 This book caught me by surprise. I wouldn't consider myself a fan of contemporary relationship novels, but this one - I loved. Mellors’ debut is an emotional, provoking and deeply relatable statement about a romantic partnership. “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” spins you around the hole of love, trauma and betrayal its characters experience, imparting lessons about how letting go might be a greater gesture of love than latching on to coupled loneliness.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

Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Fiction, Health, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Mental Health, New York, Romance 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. 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. 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. 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

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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). 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 . You have to be okay with unlikeable characters to read this book. You have to be willing to go on a journey that doesn't necessarily leave our protagonists shining and shimmering in the end. And I would've appreciated a bit more time to have the characters really dig into their issues, to grapple with the fact that the world is much bigger than just the two of them; though in some ways I think that's part of the point Mellors is trying to make. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.