as I find it almost impossible to believe that any reviewer could write one with a straight face…..

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. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. 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.This book caught me by surprise. I wouldn't consider myself a fan of contemporary relationship novels, but this one - I loved. Everyone Frank knew was the greatest ‘something’ in the world. His half-sister Zoe was the greatest actor, his best friend Anders was the greatest art director and amateur soccer player, and Cleo, well, Cleo was the most talented painter, the deepest thinker, the most beautiful woman on earth. Why? Because Frank wouldn’t have married anyone else”. Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Fiction, Health, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Mental Health, New York, Romance 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”. the whole younger woman/old man is a very tired hetero dynamic. maybe if the characters concerned are nuanced, interesting, or believable, maybe then i will bring myself to read yet another age-gap & vaguely toxic hetero romance but cleo and frank are not it. their first meeting is ridiculous, ludicrous even. of course she's beautiful and has a british accent. her hair is described as 'golden', her face, a 'performance', her clothes and makeup give her a vintage yet distinctive aura (i made the mistake of looking up coco mellors and could no longer divorce the author from the character...and i happen to find self-inserts cringe at the best of times). cleo has long fingers, smokes, she's artistic. i could keep on going...these ppl are boring and the author's attempts to make them into rooney-esque figures, well, tis' cringe. my life is too short and precious to me to waste my time on this earth reading bland stories.

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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. Cleo, a 24-year-old artist from Britain, fled to New York City to start anew and explore her artistic pursuits. As her student visa nears expiration, she meets Frank, a self-made man twenty years her senior, who leads a life of luxury that is entirely foreign to Cleo.

I hate Cleo and her goofy artsy poetic depression very much. I find attempts at making violent mental illness beautiful to be very gross and in poor taste, at best, and devastatingly unrealistic at worse. I, like every vaguely creative young person, have multiple diagnoses, but my brain chemistry failures never include installing art with my self harmed body at the center for my loved ones to find, I will tell you that. Frankenstein is a Gothic novel in that it employs mystery, secrecy, and unsettling psychology to tell the story of VictorFrankenstein’s doomed monster. The Gothic emerged as a literary genre in the 1750s, and is characterized by supernatural elements, mysterious and secretive events, settings in ancient and isolated locations, and psychological undercurrents often related to family dynamics and repressed sexuality. In Frankenstein, readers get only vague descriptions of the process Victor uses to construct the monster, and descriptions like “Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil” amplify the horror by prompting the reader to actively imagine what Victor must have done. Much of the action takes place at nighttime, and in mysterious circumstances. The novel also hints that Victor’s strange behavior may be rooted in repression. While he claims to love Elizabeth, their relationship has incestuous tones since they grew up together as siblings. He also seems reluctant to marry her and is fixated instead on his friend Henry. His desire to create life outside of typical sexual reproduction might reflect some level of trauma or disgust with heterosexuality, or sexuality in general. I found Cleopatra and Frankenstein to be a great debut by Coco Mellors and I’m excited to read what she writes next. You may also be interested in: The more I read, the more I actually wanted to read. The characters had more depth as the book progressed and while I can’t say I warmed completely to the Cleo and Frank, I began to understand them better. while this seems like the classic ‘young twenty-something woman starts dating the older richer man’ story (which we all know and love), mellors’ unique narrative style offers a fresh new take. cleo and frank’s relationship is the strand which runs through everyone else’s lives, their tumultuous up and downs bleeding into the lives of their circle of friends and family. in essence it is a love story, albeit told through the eyes of others.Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Librarians Group is the official group for requesting additions or updates to the catalog, including: Two parts contentment. One part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet. I felt as a whole the mental health aspects, including addiction and depression were handled sensitively. If I was to be slightly critical, I felt Cleo’s depression was slightly glamourised. Beautiful, suicidal Cleo who no man could resist. 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.