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. 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.

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. But you’ll notice from her acknowledgements that this was a labour of love, and one you could say, was worth every second. so i am absolutely baffled by the hype the book is receiving and the continuous comprison of the authors.Young people, people with addictions, people with traumatic childhood experiences, whatever it may be. I started off quite enjoying the vibe of this (because that’s all it’s really offering is a vibe) but I’ve never read a book that is more up itself. 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? I overall highly recommend this book to anyone looking for something that will make your heart warm and shattered at the same time.

and i know that if i were to read cleopatra and frankenstein, i'd be left hungry and longing for a more substantial meal. 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).

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.

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. Cleo’s mum died when she was young and is left with a father who appears to have no personal opinion apart from the one that aligns with his new partner. 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. Mellors also does not have the ability to make her insufferable characters compelling like Moshfegh. I also admired the decision to leave Cleo without a partner, and free of the men in her life that caused such destruction.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. If you can grip me that quickly, we're off to a good start, which is exactly what this book did (which is super rare for me! She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art—and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking.

a smiling Jamaican American who wore fuchsia lipstick with a dress made of swaths of bright diaphanous fabric— who had lost over hundred pounds thanks to the weight loss program. A good book is a book that captures my mind so intently that it makes me suffer, it torments my heart and haunts me long after I've turned the final page. Look I get that it's literary fiction and the literary fiction girlies will let an author do anything in the name of ~art.But this the story of just two of those people, and I think Mellors did a pretty masterful job of it. I love a book where nothing happens as much as the next person, but there was nothing below surface level to keep the narrative afloat. Cleo and Frank, the eponymous couple (though those are not their legal names, but 'cute' nicknames they give each other early on in their relationship), meet on New Year's Eve and are married within six months. 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.