Cleopatra and Frankenstein
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4.1 • 241 Ratings
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
PRE-ORDER BLUE SISTERS, THE HOTLY ANTICIPATED NEW NOVEL FROM COCO MELLORS NOW.
‘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
New York is slipping from Cleo’s grasp. Sure, she’s at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn’t even have money for cigarettes. But then she meets Frank. Twenty years older, Frank's life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art—and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking. He is everything she needs right now.
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.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.
Reviews
‘Positively inhalable. I was intensely consumed by the world of Cleopatra and Frankenstein for a few happy days’ The Evening Standard
‘Friends who couldn’t get enough of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends will fall head over heels for Coco Mellor’s debut novel’ ES Magazine
‘Cleopatra and Frankenstein, the luminous debut novel from Coco Mellors, is a book about many things: It's a great, swooning love story; a shattering depiction of how addiction and mental illness warp our lives; and a perceptive, witty portrait of globalized New York. But most of all, Mellors has written a devastatingly human book, at turns sharp and tender, that marks her as the rare writer whose sentences are as beautiful as they are wise. An unforgettable read’ Sam Lansky, author of The Gilded Razor and Broken People
‘A character driven epic thoroughly engrossing and entirely magnificent. It is thrilling to read a book that articles with nuance and compassion the way gender impacts every part of our lives. Sometimes you can just tell that a debut novel has been percolating and perfecting inside an author's mind until it is ready to leap into-and ultimately change-the world’ Adam Eli, author of The Queer Conscience
“Mellors’ remarkably assured and sensitive debut … strongly evoke[s] Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life… At its core, it’s a novel about how love and lovers are easily misinterpreted and how romantic troubles affect friends and family. A canny and engrossing rewiring of the big-city romance.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
‘Insistent, stylish and utterly captivating, the prose just sings.’ Heidi James, author of, The Sound Mirror
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this involving if strained debut, Mellors dissects the tumultuous relationship between two magnetic and damaged people. Frank, a successful ad executive with a worsening drinking problem, meets Cleo, an aspiring British painter 20 years his junior, on New Year's Eve in Manhattan, and they begin an affair. Six months later, they're married. Soon, resentment, carelessness, infidelity, and unresolved issues from their childhoods come between them (Frank's mother was an emotionally distant alcoholic and Cleo's died by suicide), but their intoxicating chemistry keeps them together. Mellors leavens this marital Sturm und Drang with a satirical portrait of present-day New York life. Some of it lands—one of Cleo's friends dismisses a man for having "shoe trees in all his shoes, even the sneakers. Like a psychopath"—but too often it reads like caricature. Zoe, Frank's younger half-sister, attends a "Climaxing to Consciousness" workshop; Santiago, a Peruvian chef, laments that he is "The fat friend. The sidekick. But I have feelings. I feel a lot." A notable exception is Eleanor, a screenwriter who takes a freelance job at Frank's firm and develops a flirtation with him. Her winning sections achieve the mix of wit, pathos, and romance the rest strives to attain. The tone and intrigue can feel a bit scattered, but an enticing aura glows at this work's heart. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly named the Santiago character.
Customer Reviews
Realistically Beautiful! Modern Love Story with a Hint of Alcoholism
This book was beautifully written, painted with great depth and character. The author was so brilliant at painting it with such raw and emotional depth. I mostly loved Cleo! Her struggle of finding herself and dealing with life’s problems and her lack of self love, immoral and even cruel self- criticism and destructiveness; I really fell for her character and the beauty of the author’s words. I was so glad of the well rounded end to their story and it gave me a sense of hope that things DO get better, no matter how bad the journey is.
Hilarious and Tragic
This book begins with a perfect meet-cute in a lift on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan. But the story of their relationship is not what you expect.
The book is hilarious and tragic, the banter is utterly brilliant and shows that the author has spent considerable time in the uk. The only country in the world where banter is at its funniest and is everyone’s favourite pastime.
At its heart the story is about a young British art graduate called Cleo who has no one, is heart jumps out of your chest beautiful , No parents, no siblings, and is trying to make her way in life. And it’s about Frank an American man 20 years older who is an advertising agent and alcoholic, hugely kind and funny.
It’s also about the people in their immediate orbit who are affected wether good or bad , by their relationship.
The books arena is New York, and the author makes that feel so real that you are truly breathing in the streets.
The characters are incredible full. You need to know how they are and start to care about them within a few short chapters .
There are some lines in the book that make me wish I had written them so much. They’re achingly beautiful and shockingly aware, I’ve attached a few here, for you to see just how good she is;
“ what a lovely girl she was, like a white butterfly In a bar of sunshine”
Frank thinking about how precarious Cleo’s career choice of being an artist is;
“ she was so earnest, so hopeful. Frank felt for her. There was no guarantee she would succeed at this. In fact most likely she would not. He remembered the first time he met her, walking along the streets of New York declaring she was an Artist with a proud little flick of her head. He saw the same confidence in Zoe’s confidence to become an actor, trading on her youth and beauty, wearing them away without return. They did not yet know what he did. That you could be gifted, hardworking , tenacious, even touched by a little bit of luck, and still not succeed, or if you did , not have it last. That never to experience achievements commensurate to your talent, never to receive adequate payment for your efforts, was a terrible, demoralising thing”
She’s a very talented writer. The book has won Tv rights and it deserves it. Watch this space as you will soon be hearing all about Cleopatra and Frankenstein on your tv. But before you do read the book because your own imagination will always capture it best.
Good read.
I am really into the linguistic humor presented! The story is easy and normal, but the my feeling is deep.