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

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The last thing I'll say is that lately I have been holding a pen in my hand while I read, but I'm rarely prompted to use it.

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. 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. 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. A more fundamental concern is how easy it would be to imagine this pre-recession Gotham universe as a Netflix series. The city’s surfaces are attended to in cinematic detail; emotional connective tissue often consists of characters telling their friends about their awful childhoods and narrating character traits direct to camera. (A recent Times of London profile, after breathlessly proclaiming, “Move over Sally Rooney,” noted that Mellors is “already in discussion with several streamers.”)

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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!!! 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. Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Fiction, Health, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Mental Health, New York, Romance Despite there being potentially triggering moments, I didn’t feel depressed when reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein. It was more melancholic than outright depressing. It doesn’t descend into misery porn in the way books like A Little Life did. 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.

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

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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. More than anything, Mellors shows how you can still love and care for someone, yet not be good for them. Frank and Cleo realize that their age gap, their experiences with broken families and their lifestyles ultimately make them less than compatible. Sometimes, loving another person means separating yourself from them to give them room to grow. 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. 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 Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.

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 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. They meet cute, and begin spouting off impossibly clever lines: all those sharp, witty retorts that you and I only think of twenty minutes after the fact. Later, as they lay naked in each other’s arms, the mosquito net breathing softly around them, Cleo turned to his profile”. 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.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…. as I find it almost impossible to believe that any reviewer could write one with a straight face….. 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.