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BOOK: Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors.
Coco Mellors’ debut novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a new-romantic nod to Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, and not as flippant or formulaic as it first appears. Still, the target readership may reach its peak at older millennials.
“Your voice sounds like how biting into a Granny Smith apple feels.”
“How does that feel?”
“In a word? Crisp.”
Set against the backdrop of a young and flashy New York City (with brief romantic interludes in Paris and Rome), it’s small wonder that Coco Mellors’ debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein (4th Estate), has been optioned by Warner Bros Television. The story lends itself to a Bright Lights, Big City aesthetic that will scratch the itch of an all-grown-up Gossip Girl fandom, especially those who also love quick-witted dialogue scenes (à la Woody Allen, minus the sex abuse scandal).
Homing (rather) in on literature and modern-but-messy protagonists, if you enjoyed Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually, or anything by Sally Rooney, you’ll love the timeless troubled beauty of Mellors’ listless protagonist.
Twenty-four-year-old Cleo hinges on the trope of the tortured artist soul who hides beneath her ethereal exterior. Though Britain-born, Cleo has adhered (and endeared) herself to the romance promised by the “city that never sleeps”. But, with her visa due to expire in a few weeks, adulthood is knocking at the door of her seemingly flippant life, just as she meets sexy, wealthy, funny Frank.
Line one, chapter one: this man, twenty years Cleo’s senior, but with all the dark McDreamy-meets-Eric Bana charm that we’re looking for in a love interest, exits the same New Year’s Eve party as the eponymous protagonist, entering her world to sweep her off her feet (read: solve all her love, money and visa woes).
It’s the sweetest of fictional meet-cutes, written with an unapologetic allure that excuses the character stereotypes. The first chapter could read as a standalone short: a convenient once-in-a-lifetime elevator meeting replete with witty, irreverent dialogue between two characters who act on the reader’s innermost impulses. A recipe for romance success.
Albeit an endearing beginning, it’s obvious that Frank and Cleo’s love story is doomed to end in tragedy, or at least not without a fair amount of drama. The novel begins at what is supposed to be their happy ending, but 350-odd pages remain after the couple’s first encounter, so things are bound to get somewhat saucy.
Chapter 2 begins with Cleo and Frank six months into their relationship, where we also meet their circle of friends. Each character has his or her own inner tumult and turmoil going on, which Mellors uses to touch on the novel’s main themes: marriage, friendship, love/sex, self-actualisation, addiction, and trauma.
For instance, there’s a chapter dedicated to Cleo’s best friend, Quentin, an ironically closeted trans woman who hides behind the flamboyant exterior of someone on the sex spectrum with zero fucks to give. We also take a dive into the psyche of Frank’s best mates, Anders (a handsome Polish import) and Santiago (a renowned chef with a troubled past), and we spend several chapters with Frank’s half-sister, Zoe, who, being only a few years younger than Cleo, and an actress, mirrors many of Cleo’s own enigmas and insecurities.
Earthy,
unassuming Eleanor
Admittedly, the narrative almost reaches a tedium as the midway mark approaches, but is saved by the earthy, unassuming and sometimes self-effacing, Eleanor.
Just like her character, Eleanor’s entry into the novel is subtle and retrained, but undeniable. At the turn of a page, Mellors abandons the third-person narrative and adopts first-person epistolary vignettes, possibly Eleanor’s personal journal entries, which might have been somewhat dull were it not for where and how it lands in the context of Frank and Cleo’s story.
Thanks to Eleanor, Cleopatra and Frankenstein becomes less about the beautiful, the rich and the unattainable frivolity of Cleo, Frank and their inner circle. Suddenly, but intentionally, the novel becomes more about what’s happening behind those facades in direct juxtaposition to real-world Eleanor.
Eleanor adds the gravitas that the novel had been craving till this point. And, though Mellors reverts back to the third person when the Frank and Cleo narrative is reintroduced, the reader cannot help but see their relationship, their world, through a different filter.
A coming-of-age
story for characters two decades apart
It’s hardly the gritty New York epic of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (as the UK’s Sunday Times Style intimated), but Cleopatra and Frankenstein never purports to be. While Mellors tackles similar themes to those in A Little Life, like friendship, self-harm, and addiction, she cushions the blow of the trauma with calculated buoyancy.
With its flashy, enigmatic exterior, this novel seems at first to dabble in young money New York, in tortured artist New York, in you-only-live-once New York, and in I-don’t-really-belong-here New York. But at its crux, it’s a coming-of-age story for both protagonists, even though they’re two decades apart in age.
Moreover, and without overtly saying so, Mellors draws parallels between Cleo and Frank’s childhoods, specifically in terms of the way they were mothered. Against this backdrop, Eleanor’s relationship with her mother, another key character on the periphery, speaks volumes without really saying much. Eleanor’s is a curious character; a token New Jersey Mom-mom who ends up dropping some unforgettable pearls of wisdom:
Eleanor’s story bleeds life into a book that could easily have been discarded with other frivolous #BookTok favourites, which often get a bad rap for spoon-feeding candyfloss romance (okay, sex) to juveniles. But, in Cleopatra and Frankenstein’s unassuming way, it does ultimately comment on deep-seated societal ills while maintaining (for the most part) the protagonists’ largely laissez-fair approach to deeply problematic issues.
The palate cleanser that we need
With its swish of New York style and a splash of levity, Cleopatra and Frankenstein removes the reader from the type of trauma that makes books like A Little Life and Shuggie Bain often too devastating to bear. Yes, it won’t (and hasn’t) earned Mellors a Booker nomination, but it has earned her plenty kudos as a “brilliant and bold new talent” and a writer to keep tabs on. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is appealing, if not for its salacious cover, then for its character-driven page-turner appeal and tidy (read: satisfying) ending.
Some might argue that the story ends a little too conveniently (and therefore implausibly). But, as readers in a tumultuous, uncertain, and never-neatly-wrapped-up world, replete with the ugliest of Yanagihara-like traumas, isn’t “convenient” just the palate cleanser that we need?
This book will not meet all tastes, but, for this reader and many others (read: social media FOMOers, levity lovers, redemption seekers), Cleopatra and Frankenstein has my <3.
Note: A trigger warning for the more sensitive reader, Cleopatra and Frankenstein includes graphic scenes that involve casual drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide ideation.
