book review cleopatra and frankenstein

Review: A debut novel of love and privilege that’s made for TV

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'Cleopatra and Frankenstein'

By Coco Mellors Bloomsbury: 384 pages, $28 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

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 — 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 next scene opens on the couple’s wedding day. It’s a scant six months later, and the pair’s friends are as surprised as the reader. It’s a daring leap for the lovers and also for Mellors, her fast-forward a clever way of rendering courtship as a heedless blur, the details only coming into focus once a marriage has set (or curdled). Whatever has passed between Cleo and Frank — dates, arguments, a proposal — has occurred off the page. This second chapter, the wedding reception, provides an extended party scene that introduces the supporting players who populate the novel.

The younger characters are all creative and struggling to find themselves. The older ones are “people who had found the intersection between creativity and economy, who made beautiful things but did not suffer for it.” Many of the guests have flown into Manhattan from different parts of the world, carrying origin stories and ethnicities that do too much of the work of explaining who they are. And while some are temporarily broke, no one is poor. Trust funds and inheritances shelter them. Even for those without support, it’s a shabby-chic life.

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Episodic chapters titled to mark time’s passage are narrated in the third person — until we get to “October,” wherein a woman named Eleanor tells her own story. The vignettes that open Eleanor’s chapter feel like a comedy routine, albeit tempered by sadness over a beloved fading father. Eleanor is not beautiful. As she prepares to go to a company function one night, she stands before her mirror and sees “soft belly, coarse hair, thin lips, thick waist. I am a Jewish man in drag.”

In what I’m worried is not a coincidence, the book’s clearest outsiders are two of the non-WASPs: brainy, unattractive Eleanor, the anti-Cleo, and Santiago, the overweight, unpartnered Peruvian. It’s hard not to think of them as magical minorities, helping the messy beautiful white people see themselves more deeply.

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.”)

The relationships themselves rarely feel lived-in. Frank’s younger half-sister, Zoe, is frequently mistaken for his wife because she is Black — their mother remarried a Black man. There are deep similarities beneath the surface, but Zoe describes them in broad strokes that feel like script character notes: “Their mother might not have made her offspring in her image, but she had stamped them with her nature, a fact they both deeply resented. Quick to love, quick to anger, quick to self-destruct.” Internal emotions are described in similar ways — voice-overs clumped at the ends of chapters sharing how a character had “really” been feeling.

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Maybe this comes down to a lack of social context. The servers who support the characters’ lifestyles are barely remarked upon. The homeless or the “gypsy” begging in the street are objects of distaste. And the voyage of discovery is taken along a river of self, with society and its greater problems hidden away along the banks. With the exceptions of Eleanor and Santiago, Mellors’ characters ignore the outside world. It isn’t clear whether the author intends this as social critique.

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.

There’s nothing wrong with writing books that are ripe for adaptation. Literary fiction is full of critically adored authors who hustled other jobs to pay the bills, and novels turned into series have given us some of our greatest television . But the type of enlightenment presented in certain novels, in which easy access to money makes chasing one’s art a matter only of finding oneself, ignores a world on fire with chaos and inequality. And it tends not to make for great TV either.

Berry writes for a number of publications and tweets @BerryFLW .

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Cleaver Magazine

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CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN, a novel by Coco Mellors, reviewed by Stephanie Fluckey

Cleopatra and frankenstein by coco mellors bloomsbury, 384 pages reviewed by stephanie fluckey.

I was attracted to the novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein because the title characters and I share something in common: a short courtship followed by elopement. In Coco Mellors’s debut novel, I was curious to see what she would do with this scenario, long fabled in movies and books, but also very real to me. My elopement was born out of love, seventeen hundred miles of distance, and an international border, while Cleo’s and Frank’s marriage was born out of love and an expiring visa. Though Cleo and Frank had to bear the same accusations of a marriage of convenience, which was neither of our motivations, our stories quickly evolved into something entirely different.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is part glamor and part monster, as the name suggests. Mellors bravely tells the story of a marriage that never shies away from the uncomfortable; she tackles hard subjects without embarrassment or deflection. This story is not a warm hug on a Sunday morning; it’s a wake-up call after a long night. Sometimes we need a wake-up call.

The novel opens with a charming meet-cute, where young, beautiful artist Cleo meets confident, middle-aged advertising executive Frank while leaving a New Year’s Eve party. With their natural, witty banter—their chemistry is immediately felt—we want them to be together. They go from newly introduced to newly married in a few months. Mellors fast forwards from their meeting directly to their marriage, which is the subject she really wants to address.

Coco Mellors

Marriage is never as simple as a rom-com meet cute, and Cleo and Frank ’ s relationship devolves into a monster of their creation. Cleo refuses to acknowledge the true impact of family trauma in her life, while Frank soaks his memories and regrets with alcohol. Their initial frivolity and charm comes undone as their hasty marriage spirals into betrayal and loneliness. With neither of them willing to fully examine their past, they don’t find their way to each other through their pain. Their friends and family struggle equally around them, often pulling them into their painful orbit. Cleo’s best friend Quintin struggles with his sexuality, Frank’s sister Zoe lacks self-awareness and relies on her brother’s hand-outs, while his best friend Anders desires his wife. As Cleo and Frank drift from one another, their friends don’t throw them a life line but instead take them further out to sea.

The narrative is interrupted with the introduction of Eleanor in Frank’s life. Eleanor is the comedic but truthful interloper, and her point-of-view shows a kinder, funnier Frank. While Frank is drawn to Eleanor, Cleo escapes to Anders, who absorbs her into himself. Anders’s desire for her is born out of desperation and a lust for a different life, not love.

This is not just a story of a marriage in turmoil, but one of two people desperately trying to belong. This is a story of how loneliness and addiction drive people into their own dark interiors, instead of bringing them together. As Cleo desensitizes Frank’s alcoholism with infidelity, and Frank rebels against Cleo’s frustration with anger and self-aggrandizement, they both fail to meet the other’s need: connection. As their friends’ lives bump and hurdle through space, they become a mirror of Cleo and Frank’s untethering. Their relationship irreparably changes when Cleo’s desperate action severs their marriage: she sees him as the cause of all her pain, and he sees her as the death of all they had.

This may sound sad, and at times it is. It is Mellors’s deft ability to lighten a scene with humor and honesty that sees the reader through the hard moments. We cry with these characters, but we also laugh with them—they’re so human. They share deep desires and weaknesses with a vulnerability that will make any reader feel less alone. Though the ending is not a neatly tied bow, as many stories that open with a meet-cute are, Cleo and Frank do find a way back: not to each other, but to themselves.

Thankfully, my elopement took me in a different direction, but my empathy for Cleo and Frank runs deep, because they started in the same place: in love. There is no perfect love story, but unlike Cleopatra, Cleo doesn’t succumb to the viper, nor does Frank become Frankenstein’s monster. Their change, however difficult, creates something entirely new out of each of them. This is not the story of a happy marriage, but it is the story of two people who discover what it takes to find their happiness: a better understanding and acceptance of themselves.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Book Reviews .

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Washington Square News

Review: ‘Cleopatra and Frankenstein’ tackles love and loneliness

NYU alum Coco Mellors’ “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” is a complex narrative of love, loss, trauma and companionship.

Aaliya Luthra

(Illustration by Aaliya Luthra)

Aarna Dixit , Contributing Writer March 27, 2023

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 . 

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.

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.

“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.

Each character is complex and vibrant, their powerful presence on the page complementing the chaos of Frank and Cleo’s relationship. The narrators work to demonstrate how people in our lives, beyond our romantic partners, inform our sense of companionship. It ultimately divests importance from the broken love story at the heart of the novel and spotlights how other interpersonal relationships can offer individuals the support they need.

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. 

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.

The essence of “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” is encapsulated by a conversation between Zoe, Cleo and Cleo’s friend Audrey early on in the novel. Zoe relays to Cleo some advice from her yoga instructor: if someone is stuck in a hole, you can try as much as you want to help them get out, but the only way you can truly help them is to jump into the hole with them. Zoe dismisses the saying as silly, but Cleo reflects upon its meaning, muttering, “The hole is loneliness” to herself.

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. 

Contact Aarna Dixit at [email protected] .

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• Coco Mellors
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The Literary Edit

Cleopatra and Frankenstein: A beautiful debut by Coco Mellors

Thus far, 2022 has not been a great year for reading. Drowning in on-going visa dramas and the uncertainty of living in a country where I’m not a permanent resident has – it’s safe to say – had something of a dire effect on my inclination for books. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve started a new novel, only to read a chapter or two before giving up, and leaving said book to collect dust on one of the many stacks of books piled up around my apartment.

And, now that my boyfriend has moved in with me, long and lazy evenings curled up on my sofa with a book have been replaced with night, after night, after night glued to Breaking Bad (I know I’m fifteen years late but, here we are). Thankfully, as often happens when it comes to my reading life, a book found me exactly when I needed it. Plastered all over Instagram and recommended by my dear friend Caitie, Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors came as a welcome relief and a picture-perfect remedy to what was a seemingly never-ending, God-awful reading slump.  

Cleopatra and Frankenstein Book Review

A charming debut from Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a beautifully written tale that is atmospheric, rich with nuance and offers readers a wonderful dose of escapism. It’s a story that starts with a classic meet cute: two strangers meet in an elevator as they’re both trying to escape a party on the cusp of the new year. Cleo – an ethereal yet difficult artists who hails from England is in her early twenties, while Frank, a successful media mogul is in his forties.

Promise lingers in the air as they ring in the new year, and a whirlwind romance, soon evolves into a marriage, meaning that Cleo’s expiring student visa and the borrowed time on which she’s living in NYC is quickly resolved.

What follows is an exploration of love and life set against a gritty and glamorous New York backdrop as we meet a growing cast of characters, each of whom have a part to play in the complexity of Cleo and Frank’s relationship.

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.

For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple’s impulsive marriage.

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.

Fur ther reading

I loved Coco Mellor’s modern love story in The New York Times: An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill .

Coco Mellors Author Bio

Coco Mellors was raised in London and New York City. She completed her MFA in Fiction at New York University, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. She currently lives in Venice, Los Angeles.

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein review: an inhalable debut that will (definitely) be compared to Sally Rooney

I think we can all agree: quick marriages between people who barely know one another are not a good idea. But they do make quite fun novels , as it turns out. That’s true at least for Cleopatra and Frankenstein, a positively inhalable debut by Coco Mellors about the fallout of a snap marriage between an older man and a younger woman.

Frank and Cleo are at a trendy New Year’s Eve party in New York when they meet by chance in a lift. He’s a fortysomething ad agency boss who drinks more than he should, weathering the disappointment of giving up his creative dreams to make money. She’s a beautiful British artist twenty years his junior, with long blonde hair and a visa that’s about to expire. Witty repartee and frantic snogging out of the way, they marry a few months later. Their wedding is peopled by the book’s supporting cast, who include Quentin, Cleo’s gender-confused trustafarian pal who secretly thinks they’re soulmates; Zoe, Frank’s financially dependent baby sister; and Anders, Frank’s ‘will shag any woman who walks’ best mate.

Their jumpstarted marriage offers rich terrain for Mellors to explore. Reading the novel post #MeToo, Mellors’ observations about the suspicions between men and women feel perceptive. The resilience – both financial and spiritual – needed to pursue a creative life is a recurrent theme, too. Even when Cleo’s painterly ambitions are effectively subsidised by Frank, she’s too depressed and damage to produce much work.

About halfway through the novel, the tone shifts abruptly. A chapter told entirely in first person fragments introduces us to Eleanor, a newbie freelancer at Frank’s agency. Coming out of nowhere, her quick wit is entrancing both to Frank and to us. Form, unfortunately for Cleo, looks to reflect content.

Otherwise Mellors’ writing is dialogue heavy, episodic in structure and full of rich scene setting. From the first chapter I wondered how long it would be before it becomes a TV show. It does have a tendency to be eyebrow-raisingly whimsical – at one point Frank buys Cleo a sugar glider off the internet to cheer her up . Cleo herself is the least interesting character, an ethereal, damaged waif who – of course – finds her wedding dress at the back of a vintage shop. She – of course – looks sickeningly gorgeous in it, even when she realises halfway through the wedding that it’s actually a nightdress (oh, woe!). And I’m curious as to why there are so many stories about younger women having steamy affairs with older men right now – is it subversive?

But Mellors does have a knack for an excellent sentence and she is wonderful at the ebb and flow rhythms of dialogue. She writes about the frustrations of bad sex brilliantly: Cleo explains to one gent that “this jabbing thing – it’s not sex. It’s you masturbating with my body instead of your hand.”

It’s all a riot to read, even when you slightly feel like you’ve been here before. There’s something reminiscent of A Little Life in the way that Mellors’ characters are at the mercy of their damage. During the Eleanor chapters, I felt as though I was reading Lorrie Moore or Patricia Lockwood. Booze-soaked frustrated artist Frank reminded me of a Richard Yates character, and a set-piece showdown with Cleo’s awful, new age healer step-mum called to mind a head-scarfed Olivia Colman in Fleabag.

And of course, someone will compare it to Sally Rooney, because someone always does. The sheer amount of deja vu made the reading experience feel almost nostalgic. But Mellors knows how to drive a story and write compelling characters, and I was intensely consumed by the world of Cleopatra and Frankenstein for a few happy days.

Out now, Fourth Estate, £14.99

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A reading journey.

Cleopatra and frankenstein – honest review.

Before we begin, rest assured that my review is spoiler-free.

I recently delved into the pages of ‘Cleopatra and Frankenstein’ a novel by Coco Mellors. This book was highly recommended by a friend, making it a truly valuable reading experience.

Picture this: Cleopatra and Frankenstein, two iconic names hailing from entirely different realities, somehow find themselves intertwined in the same narrative.

Coco Mellors skillfully weaves an exhilarating tale where Cleopatra awakens in modern times, bringing with her a considerable amount of historical baggage in the form of her age-old adversary, Frankenstein. The journey that unfolds is a captivating blend of history and science fiction, taking us on a wild and utterly unpredictable ride.

Trigger warning for Cleopatra and Frankenstein:

Some of the difficult topics that are presented in this book are: Suicide, depression, alcoholism, drugs and infidelity.

You may want to read reviews or summaries of the book to confirm whether it contains content that might be distressing for you.

Coco Mellors writing style: How is it?

Coco Mellors serves up words like a fresh batch of cookies – sweet, easy to gobble down, and just a bit unexpected. Her tone balances the absurd with the heartfelt, keeping you curious about what’s coming next.

Coco isn’t afraid to toss in metaphors and imagery that paint vivid mental pictures, making the reading experience feel like you’re watching a film play out. Sometimes, the story takes unexpected detours that might make you raise an eyebrow, but it’s all part of the quirky charm.

I must say that, although I didn’t fall in love with the story at the beginning, I really liked Coco’s writing style.

What about the characters of the book?

I have to confess that Cleo and her bunch of friends were a bit hard to get with. People complaining about their 1st world problems? (like “having a British passport and not the American visa to finish my art studies”). Hmm, okay? Maybe it’s just me not being compassionate enough, I guess.

But it’s also true that as the story rolled on, I got interested and wanted to know more about the characters. And I realized at some point that they were not the usual heroes you root for from the start, but their imperfections somehow make them feel more real.

Special mention to Eleanor, that was for sure my favourite character, and the one that saved this book.

Is Cleopatra and Frankenstein a romance book?

The main focus of the book is not romance, but you’ll have your dose of bittersweet romance, yes.

The themes of time, identity, and friendship blend in seamlessly, causing a powerful mix of emotions – confusion, laughter, and even a touch of sympathy. And hey, it’s more than just an oddball adventure; it made me think about the absurdity of life and how even the most unlikely connections can teach us a thing or two. Is it not romantic?

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• About the Book

The smash Sunday Times bestseller and Goodreads Choice Award finalist --- perfect for readers of MODERN LOVERS and CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS. An addictive, humorous and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

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.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

• Publication Date: January 30, 2024
• Genres: Fiction , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• ISBN-10: 1639730702
• ISBN-13: 9781639730704

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CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN

by Coco Mellors ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 8, 2022

A canny and engrossing rewiring of the big-city romance.

A May-December romance rapidly hits turbulence in early-aughts Manhattan.

Mellors’ remarkably assured and sensitive debut opens with a meet-cute that’s as charming and frothy as it is misleading. On New Year’s Eve 2006, Cleo, a 24-year-old budding British artist, shares an elevator with Frank, a 40-something ad exec. Easy banter leads to flirtation, and flirtation speeds to romance; within six months, they’re married. Figuring out whether that decision has to do with true love, keeping Cleo in the country, or satisfying other suppressed needs is just one of the storm clouds that soon blow in. Quentin, Cleo’s closest friend, is consumed by a jealousy he sublimates into drugs and sex. Cleo’s art ambitions go sideways. Frank’s drinking regresses into alcoholism. His fashion-student sister, Zoe, grows reckless, needy, and similarly addictive. Eleanor, a young copywriter at Frank’s firm, is a perceived threat. Affairs are considered and/or consummated. The novel’s somber stretches, wide cast of characters, and cross sections of New York social spheres strongly evoke Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life , but Mellors also cultivates a sprightlier style that keeps the novel’s familiar tropes from feeling clichéd or reducing her characters to types. (Think of Armistead Maupin or Laurie Colwin in a moodier register.) She’s playful with characterization and voice; Eleanor’s sections are distinctively written in the first-person, with a young writer’s pitch-perfect brashness and anxiety. And she describes parties, workplaces, apartments, and familial dynamics with impressive sophistication. She has a knack for crisp, witty summaries, as in her description of a seedy underground gay club that Quentin haunts: “They’d striven for Grecian fantasy and ended up with Greek restaurant.” But the humor doesn’t overwhelm the melancholy heart of the story: At its core, it’s a novel about how love and lovers are easily misinterpreted and how romantic troubles affect friends and family.

Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-63557-681-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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REAL AMERICANS

by Rachel Khong ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2024

Bold, thoughtful, and delicate at once, addressing life’s biggest questions through artfully crafted scenes and characters.

A sweeping exploration of choice, chance, class, race, and genetic engineering in three generations of a Chinese American family.

Khong’s follow-up to her sweet, slim debut— Goodbye, Vitamin (2017)—is again about parents and children but on a more ambitious scale, portraying three generations in what feel like three linked novellas, or somehow also like three connected gardens. The first begins in 1999 New York City, where Lily Chen stands next to a man at an office party who wins a big-screen TV in the raffle. He insists she take it; he is Matthew Maier, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, and has all the TVs he needs. On their first date, they go to Paris after dinner, and as this section ends, they’ve had their first child. The second part of the book moves to 2021 on an island off the coast of Washington state. It’s narrated by Lily’s now-15-year-old son, Nick; his father is nowhere in sight, at least for now. The closing section unfolds in 2030 in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s told by Lily’s now elderly mother, May, with an extended flashback to her youth in China during the Cultural Revolution and her first years in the U.S. As a budding scientist, May was fascinated by genetics. Of the lotus flowers she studied at university, she observes, “Raindrop-shaped buds held petals that crept closer, each day, to unfurling. As humans we were made of the same stuff, but their nucleotides were coded such that they grew round, green leaves instead of our human organs, our beating hearts.” This concern for how and why we turn out the way we do animates the book on every level, and along with science, social constructs like race and class play major roles. Every character is dear, and every one of them makes big mistakes, causing a ripple effect of anger and estrangement that we watch with dismay, and hope.

Pub Date: April 30, 2024

ISBN: 9780593537251

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION

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DEMON COPPERHEAD

by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.

Inspired by David Copperfield , Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.

It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.

Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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In brief: Cleopatra and Frankenstein; Unattached; Dálvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra – review

A stylish novel about an impulsive marriage, female reflections on the single life and an entrancing escape to the far north

Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Coco Mellors Fourth Estate, £14.99, 384pp

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

Edited by Angelica Malin Square Peg, £14.99, 176pp

Sadly, the personal essay is not the established literary genre here that it is in the US, but while this patchy collection doesn’t exactly exceed expectations, it does nevertheless gesture to the potential richness of the female experience of being unattached. Yes, there are tears – heck, there are Fleetwood Mac lyrics – but you’ll also find calls to broaden the definition of romance, to quit thinking of single life as mere prologue and to wonder whether the reason we’re taught to fear going solo might perhaps be that it makes us so very powerful. Try not to mind mantras of “self-care” and tending your inner child and turn instead to essays by Mia Levitin and Rosie Wilby.

Dálvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra

Laura Galloway Allen & Unwin, £8.99, 304pp (paperback)

When Manhattanite Galloway accepted delivery of a dozen red roses from her husband one morning, she was thrilled. Then she spotted the divorce papers taped to them. Not long after, she leapt with her two cats into the ultimate void: a Sami community in the Arctic north, a place of whiteness and silence where she’s so clueless about daily life, she doesn’t even know what to worry about. This compulsive account of her time there occasionally falls back on self-help tropes, but not even talk of “soul level” connections and pet psychics can obscure the bracing wonder of its setting, a place that becomes not just her refuge but also her teacher.

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book review: Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

TW: homophobia, transphobia, suicidal thoughts, self harm, drug use, alcoholism 

Overview: Cleo and Frank meet each other by chance, but their elevator encounter has ripples through the lives of so many fellow New Yorkers. Cleo and Frank embark on a whirlwind two years together along with their various agency and artist friends who are all crumbling behind their various versions of the New York dream. In an exploration of the unintended toxic reactions that can spark even between people who hold genuine love, this book charts the life of Cleo and Frank's spontaneous marriage and everything that happens as a consequence. Overall: 3 

I feel like the only person on the planet who's not head over heels for this one. It was just really messy, and not in a fun way.

Characters: 3.5 The book is made interesting by its large cast that's followed intimately through the years. It's based on a small yet ever expansive world of a friend group blended by a married couple, and I do like how much we're able to see of all of these people on an intimate level. The story is not singularly about the title characters of the book. I was interested in these people and the subtle shifts in their relationships and how small jabs or random sentences said in passing have massive effects down the line. The characters as a whole do a good job of reminding the reader that we are all fragile, and that words do have a lifelong impact. They should be chosen with intention. 

My issue is that so many of these characters play into stereotypes in a way that I feel like Mellors trying to tee them up to be subversive but never quite achieving it. I feel like part of the issue is the way that Mellors seems to be striving for an old-timey or I guess "classic" feel in a book that also wants to discuss modern issues. In the world of the book, everything works well enough, but it left me feeling off-put in reflection on how some characters were portrayed and issues were handled. 

The characters I liked most were Zoey, Frank's half sister, and Cleo herself. While Cleo is sometimes a bit boxed in by an idea of who she is, her journey was broadly satisfying and human. At her core, we come to realize she craves the normalcy and stability that she actively pushes away for the sake of appearing like the free spirit she thinks she's meant to be. At the end of the day, her deep hopelessness comes from those who are supposed to be her best friends telling her that she never can have that stable life she wants, that she's not good enough for it (this is a theme that's also hugely present in Sorrow and Bliss  as well). 

As for Zoey, she's the youngest character–an NYU student and aspiring actress. She doesn't have the same privileges as her peers, though she does have some safety net. She starts the book extremely closed off to new people and opportunities in favor of a constant swirl of drugs and alcohol. By the end of the book, she forms a quiet but lovely bond with Cleo and has grown a lot. 

Plot: 4  I did enjoy how the story progressed, but it is quite long and rambling. There are scenes that didn't seem expressly necessary, and each chapter did eventually start to drag. Maybe if the book was a bit tighter it would've gelled better for me. I did like the concept, though, of experiencing each chapter from a different character's head getting a closer look at the happenings of their lives while having those events still progress central narrative of Cleo and Frank's relationship. I liked the way this structure highlighted, like I've mentioned, the butterfly effect of it all. It showcases the small moments that change everything well, and it makes a point about how a comment one person sees as inconsequential can haunt another person for a lifetime.

Writing: 3  I think my biggest issue with this book is that I didn't find it at all as interesting and intriguing as everyone made it out to be on bookstagram. A lot of that stemmed from the writing itself. It was disorienting at the start of the book how the language made it feel like the book was set in the 1930s or some kind of historical period. Then as more details came into focus, I figured maybe it was set in 2000. Then, slowly, it became more apparent that it was meant to be set somewhere close to present day. But it seems to be yearning so badly to have that air of the past in a way that was frustrating because it didn't fully embrace all aspects of the present in doing that. Eventually, we find out there's email and there's cell phones and there's Google, but it so staunchly avoids social media's existence in a way that makes it feel less honest to the experiences it was trying to convey. 

I'm not one to shy away from books that have been labeled pretentious. Some of my favorites lately are Sally Rooney books and  The Idiot .  But it felt like the writing styles and the points of view of those books were done in service of the character's true identities and the stories. Beyond that, the language was fascinating, and I relished in those sentences. Cleopatra and Frankenstein  feel like it's constantly feigning importance in the way the story is presented because it's unsure if it really has enough substance ultimately. 

Also, I can't get over the 2 random chapters from Eleanor's point of view that are suddenly told in first person with no signal or explanation when the entire rest of the novel is told in omniscient third. That all knowing, in everyone's head nature of each chapter, while broadly following a single character's experience, works so well. And then there's these random first person chapters told in rambling disconnected paragraphs strung together into interminably long chapters with a character we've hardly met. I don't dislike that style in general. I've enjoyed it in plenty of books (read Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead if you enjoyed these two chapters' style). But I didn't need it randomly inserted into a novel that otherwise was trying to profess its DNA as something very different. 

This book just felt inherently confused and a little overzealous in trying to make sure it delivered, so it tossed the kitchen sink into the novel. Possibly, a little more restraint and a smaller scope that was allowed to create more nuanced details would have left me feeling better about this extremely popular novel. The book isn't bad, I've just seen it done much better.

Books Mentioned in This Review

book review: Sorrow and Bliss

book review: The Idiot

book review: Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead

sally rooney reviews

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein Paperback – January 30, 2024

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The smash National bestseller and Goodreads Choice Award finalist--perfect for readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends. An addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple’s impulsive marriage. Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank’s life is full of all the excesses Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could’ve predicted. 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. As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.

• Print length 384 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date January 30, 2024
• Dimensions 5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
• ISBN-10 1639730702
• ISBN-13 978-1639730704
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

“Tantalizing … cinematic … [Mellors] has written some extraordinary sentences and shows a great talent for dialogue.” ― Los Angeles Times “A clever debut novel… Cleo is a … self-possessed literary heroine.” ― The New Yorker “If Conversations With Friends has you yearning to read about more dysfunctional relationships, look no further than Cleopatra and Frankenstein . . . This is a perfect read . . . a story with finely drawn characters you'll grow to care about.” ― Buzzfeed “Deeply engrossing and easily lovable, perfect for fans of Sally Rooney and Lauren Groff.” ― Booklist “An irresistible, un-put-downable, page-turner of a novel. A love letter to New York, a love letter to love, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a complex, funny, deeply-felt, beautifully written debut.” ― Nathan Englander, author of WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK and KADDISH.COM “Shimmers with wit and wisdom... Mellors' brilliantly crafted story and unforgettable characters offer unvarnished insight into the very heart of what it means to be human. I will be pressing this book into all my friends' hands.” ― Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of GROUP “Cleo is a 24-year-old painter with an expiring student visa; Frank is 20 years older and financially stable (and then some). Their “impulsive marriage” sets off all sorts of reactions in their circle of friends and family-not to mention their individual reactions as they settle in as husband and wife. It's giving me early-season Girls vibes, which I'm very much here for. ” ― LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2022 “Mellors' remarkably assured and sensitive debut … strongly evoke[s] Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life , but Mellors also cultivates a sprightlier style that keeps the novel's familiar tropes from feeling clichéd or reducing her characters to types … 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 “Mellors dissects the tumultuous relationship between two magnetic and damaged people … an enticing aura glows at this work's heart.” ― Publishers Weekly “Ripples from one couple's tumultuous relationship spread widely in Coco Mellors's engaging debut novel … creating a nuanced, deeply emotional journey for her cast. Mellors's prose is a compelling balance of beautiful phrasing and snappy dialogue that propels the story while allowing time for reflection … it's the fullness of their humanity that makes Cleopatra and Frankenstein a worthwhile read. The beauty lies in the broken bits, and Mellors captures both.” ― Shelf Awareness “These New Yorkers are displayed in all their humanity, and spending time among their brightness, laughter and tears is delightful. Mellors is a sparkling, intelligent talent.” ― Spectator World “ 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 “I was in the thrall of this ambitious, surprising novel from the very first page. With razor-sharp dialogue, a keen eye for detail, and a cast of unforgettable characters, Cleopatra and Frankenstein untangles the mess of hope and heartache that love too often leaves in its wake. It's an astounding debut by a wise, assured writer. I can't wait to see what Coco Mellors conjures up next.” ― Grant Ginder, author of THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING “Coco Mellors writes about today's Bright Young Things as they stumble through marriages, affairs, artistic quandaries and addictive temptations. She is a strong writer of wit and sophistication who creates with assurance a jangling world where friendships both matter and falter, and where how to love remains the deepest preoccupation of all.” ― Susan Minot, author of Monkeys, Evenings, Thirty Girls and Why I Don't Write “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 NEW QUEER CONSCIENCE “A heart-stopping, page-turning, romantic saga rendered with uncommon depth and nuance. Mellors has created a couple that feels achingly real; the passionate fire that fuels their marriage is the same blaze that threatens to burn it to the ground. But the book smartly expands its lens beyond just husband and wife, and examines how one relationship can have a global impact on an entire network of loved ones. Cleopatra and Frankenstein will ensnare you with its irresistible wit, surprise you with its powerful insight, and enthrall you with its kaleidoscopic portrait of one great love affair.” ― Jonathan Parks-Ramage, author of YES, DADDY

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing (January 30, 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1639730702
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1639730704
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
• #286 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
• #437 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
• #775 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Coco mellors.

Coco Mellors is a writer from London and New York. She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University, where she was a Goldwater fellow. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is her first novel.

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein: A Novel

• By Coco Mellors
• Bloomsbury Publishing
• Reviewed by Tayla Burney
• February 11, 2022

Refusing to grow up plays better in Never Never Land than in modern-day Manhattan.

Adulthood is an arbitrary, fickle thing. There’s nothing truly transformative about turning 18 or 21. Sure, you can buy a lottery ticket or a bottle of booze. Or vote, to keep it classy. But being a grownup isn’t about your age, really. I’d argue my 4-year-old possesses greater maturity than some fully grown men I’ve encountered.

For some, the onset of true adulthood proves elusive and unattainable well beyond the legal achievement of it. Lots of people only reach it when their experiences or circumstances force it upon them. Others never get there — languishing in a kind of adolescent purgatory for years or decades.

Unless you’re Peter Pan, it’s not so cute never to grow up. And the characters in Coco Mellors’ Cleopatra and Frankenstein are not Peter Pan. They’re stunted pseudo-adults who seem incapable of achieving maturity or even displaying empathy. When they finally do, the cost is so steep, the damage so extensive, and the page count so high, it’s difficult to know if the destination was worth the journey. For the reader, that is.

The novel’s premise sets up rocky terrain ahead from the very beginning. The titular couple — Cleo and Frank — meet cute one night in New York City. They’re both leaving the same party, Frank to get ice from a bodega, Cleo simply to go. They strike up a conversation, neither returns to the party, and thus a whirlwind romance is born.

It’s a relationship fueled as much by drugs and drinks as by chemistry. Lest you think those drugs are strictly a joke, Frank, Cleo, and their set are the reason restaurants put up charming needlepoints that say “ please don’t do coke in the bathroom .” It’s also fueled by the prettiness of each of these people. Frank is classically handsome. Cleo is described as an almost ethereal beauty who is also young enough to be Frank’s daughter. Keep an eye on the power imbalance this creates because it becomes a real third partner in their relationship later on.

In fact, it’s a relationship that might have burned hot and bright before fizzling out, but circumstance — with a big dash of heedless impulsivity — nudges these two toward the altar instead. The English Cleo needs a green card if she wants to stay in the U.S. Frank hopes to care for someone of his own choosing. The two have a courthouse wedding, attended by the hot-dog vendor from out front, and an epic dinner celebration catered by their rising-star-chef friend, Santiago, who’d thrown the party where they originally met. The honeymoon phase, alas, is short-lived.

Taken as individuals, it’s strangely hard to know either main character. Frank might best be described as the very embodiment of the patriarchy. A privileged white male enjoying wild success without much (apparent) talent or effort.

Unfair? Perhaps. Maybe he’s a true advertising wunderkind, but we don’t get to see that. Nor do we really get to see Cleo’s talent. She’s an artist, yes, but she’s so eaten up by Frank’s life that we don’t notice her burgeoning gifts. It’s possible, of course, that that’s the point. Each protagonist enables the worst tendencies of the other, and that’s what we do see.

Nothing like a little schadenfreude to pique a reader’s interest. Entire magazines rely on that impulse to keep them afloat. The problem here is that it goes on for several hundred pages full of standard household drama and escalating pathos. The domestic drudgery, even if it’s realistic — or because it is — is awfully tedious. Show me an argument I and my fellow marrieds haven’t lived!

And the pathos, well, it’s tough to take when you don’t like anyone. A bit of relief comes from a handful of the title characters’ friends and relations. But most of the supporting cast are just as bad as, if not worse than, Frank and Cleo when it comes to arrested maturity and selfishness. It’s thanks to the few who do exhibit some compassion and emotional intelligence that the novel’s promise is fulfilled.

The turning point comes about two-thirds of the way in, with a dramatic episode of self-harm from Cleo, who is so worn down and miserable in her relationship with Frank that she loses her grip on herself to an alarming extreme. Santiago is the one friend Frank confides in and seeks support from. The care and compassion Santiago brings to his visit with Cleo seems to crack open the ability for the other characters to see beyond the ends of their own noses.

The remainder of the book feels finally rendered in color. Most of the characters grow into real people, and those who cannot are left behind. It’s a satisfying conclusion, but a reader must weigh the journey against the payoff. Then again, maybe I’m just a dull adult who doesn’t appreciate how great it is to do coke in a restaurant bathroom.

Tayla Burney is an avid reader who is passionate about supporting literacy and independent bookstores. Her literary newsletter is on hiatus, but she still tweets entirely too much at @taylakaye.

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein (2022) is Coco Mellors’s debut novel and is currently being adapted into a television series by Warner Bros, Inc. The novel explores modern love, the pressures and debauchery of the wealthy, and the conflict between youth and age. Written mostly in third person, Cleopatra and Frankenstein centers on 24-year-old Cleo and 45-year-old Frank , two broken people who find one another in a passionate and loving fling. With secondary characters to bring diverse perspectives to the novel’s central themes, Mellors creates a glittery Manhattan world that looks pretty but is rotting from the inside.

This guide references the 2022 Bloomsbury Publishing hardcover edition.

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Content Warning : This novel includes discussions of drug abuse and death by suicide.

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On New Year’s Eve in New York City, Cleo and Frank meet on an elevator exiting a party. Frank is in his forties, a handsome and successful creative director of his own advertising agency. Cleo is in her twenties, a broke artist who is coming up on the expiration of her student visa and is desperate not to return to a broken family in England. Cleo and Frank immediately click, and their sexual relationship turns into a romance. Only a few months later, Cleo and Frank get married. No one pretends that this marriage is not one of convenience so that Cleo can get her Green Card. Even so, Cleo and Frank are genuinely in love with one another.

Not everyone is supportive of Cleo and Frank’s marriage. Cleo’s gay best friend Quentin is jealous of the time Cleo spends with Frank, and Frank’s young half sister, Zoe , is wary of Cleo’s intentions and access to Frank’s money.

As the weeks after their marriage go on, Frank and Cleo learn more and more about one another. Cleo notes that Frank parties a lot and is often drunk. Cleo stops taking her medication for depression, a condition she inherited from her mother, who died by suicide when Cleo was in college. Cleo sinks into her own depressive tendencies, worrying Frank.

Quentin gets involved with a mysterious man named Alex, who gets him hooked deeper into drugs. Zoe struggles with financing her lifestyle. While Frank has long provided for her, Zoe’s recently been cut off. She can’t pay off her outings in New York City while still being an acting student. Zoe tries to avoid Cleo, but eventually the two young women find common ground and become friends.

Frank’s best friend Anders pines after Cleo. They slept together right after Cleo met Frank when she and Frank weren’t necessarily exclusive. Even though it was a one-night stand, Cleo and Anders often think of that night. Both Anders and Cleo keep it a secret, so Frank won’t find out.

At Frank’s advertising agency, Eleanor , a new copywriter, starts a temp job. Eleanor was living in Los Angeles, writing for television, but moved back in with her mother in New Jersey. Eleanor’s father is sick, and her job in the city gives her the ability to help take care of her father. Eleanor quickly falls in love with Frank. They have a natural banter and make each other laugh. Cleo suspects that Frank is in love with Eleanor when she reads their email exchange.

As the weeks go on, Frank and Cleo fight more and more, mostly about Frank’s drinking. Frank, desperate to make Cleo happy, gets her a pet: a sugar glider. Cleo is thrilled about the sugar glider , and for a moment, Frank and Cleo come together to take care of another living thing. But one night, Frank gets drunk and forgets to close the toilet bowl, so the sugar glider falls in the water and drowns.

When Frank goes to South Africa for a few weeks on a job assignment, Cleo has an affair with Anders. She tells Anders she wants to leave Frank. When she doesn’t, Anders, heartbroken, moves to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Frank’s drinking and Cleo’s depression get worse. Cleo attempts to die by suicide by slitting her wrists in Frank’s apartment. Frank finds her, and Cleo gets hospitalized. Cleo’s life is saved, but her and Frank’s relationship is over.

Cleo moves in with Quentin, but when Alex moves in too, she quickly moves out. Cleo attends an art show for an ex-boyfriend, where she gets high and drunk and dumps a bucket of ice water on Anders. Meanwhile, Zoe, to pay off her credit card debt without asking her brother for help, joins an escort service. The first man she meets on the service, Jiro, pays her only for her companionship. They develop a close friendship, and Zoe reconsiders how she’s been thinking about herself, intimacy, and her future.

Cleo moves out of New York when she gets an art fellowship in Rome. Eleanor’s father dies and she decides to start living more for herself. She’s long quit the agency to avoid Frank but reaches out to him. Frank starts visiting her in New Jersey, and they quickly start dating. A script proposal Eleanor created for an animated television show is accepted, and she starts a new life with Frank. Eleanor encourages Frank to reach out to Cleo, who is clearly broken and in need of a family.

Frank visits Cleo in Rome. She’s doing well: She’s back on her antidepressants, she likes the European lifestyle, and she spends her days committed to making art with other artists. She’s jealous of Frank’s new relationship but ultimately happy for him—Frank has stopped drinking and seems lighter. Frank and Cleo agree that they’ll always have love for one another. They’ll get divorced but will remain as close as family.

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein

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Mellors’s debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein , is a portrait of love and becoming, spread across marriage, friendship, addiction, art, trauma, and all of the ugly and sparkling things left in their wake. The story begins with a RomCom meet-cute, young British artist Cleo running into middle-aged successful Frank in the elevator during a mutual friend’s New Year’s Party in the wake of the mid-2000s. Following their quick love and quick marriage, the narrative does not rely on plot as it weaves itself across the different characters that make up their lives: Cleo and Frank themselves, as well as the friends and family who step in and out of the scene, a RomCom cast fitting of both the novel’s story as well as its understanding of imperfect human relationships and what they reveal about identity and self.

Mellors’s voice is self-conscious and indulgent but aware, using its understanding of the ego to propel the novel’s themes on building one’s identity in the wake of trauma and personal growth. The narrative is brutally honest, indulging in the imperfections of human life as well as the ego built around a stereotypical bohemian sadness, while at the same time observing and giving grace to the fact that becoming better is often an asymptotic pursuit.

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