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

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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. PDF / EPUB File Name: Cleopatra_and_Frankenstein_-_Coco_Mellors.pdf, Cleopatra_and_Frankenstein_-_Coco_Mellors.epub

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…. yep, too much wit, swooning, tidbits, themes, dialogue, life quandaries, perplexing showy sentences, and cheesiness,…… 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. This book caught me by surprise. I wouldn't consider myself a fan of contemporary relationship novels, but this one - I loved. 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!!!

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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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.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

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. 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 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.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.

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Two parts contentment. One part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet. 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. 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 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. While I didn’t fully warm to Cleo and Frank, there were characters in the book that I did really like. I really enjoyed Eleanor’s sections written in first person narrative. Her interactions with her mother were both amusing and poignant at times. I also adored big-hearted Santiago.