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

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the first pages suck you in with it’s witty and perfectly romantic start… but then… oh jesus… it does crumble hard.

they're all self-absorbed immature people who cannot empathise with others and cannot think of anybody but themselves. 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. New York breeds unhappiness and problems, and in that sense, it makes you fit into a mould that truly, only some people are made for. I became both tired of it and I also desperately wanted to go back to its pages, its got the push and pull of a toxic relationship, a clever tool used to mimic the central relationship in the novel. cleo is in her early twenties, a beautiful and troubled artist from england whose expiring student visa means she’s living on borrowed time in new york city.

served with dialogue about childhood trauma, masturbation and a four-in-a-half year old who had her first orgasm. While not every sentence sticks the landing, there's more than enough in this novel to make up for the few issues I had with it, especially considering this is a debut! you can’t just slather more cement on top of an already-filled hole and expect the outcome to be smooth. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a journey and yes, it isn’t for everyone, but if you can get past the change in form and tone, I think you’ll be able to appreciate the fact that Mellors has managed to build a relationship with the reader and several very complicated characters in her very first novel while paying homage to New York. 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.

I've noticed this book has been heavily and exhaustingly compared to Sally Rooney, which I think is irrelevant and definitely not something you should let influence your decision to read or not read the book.The two central characters are in two very different chapters of their life – Cleo has graduated with an arts degree and finds herself with very little to live on and a visa that is about run out, and Frank is still clinging onto his youthful abandonment while making a name for himself in advertising. a PERFORMANCE of the greatest sentences, the greatest off-the-wall absurdities, the greatest exaggerated character descriptions…. 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.

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.Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year's Eve party changes everything, for better or worse.

Let me give you some context of how I came about the novel: to start with, I think I was more accustomed with the cover of this novel, than I was the actual content of it. But you’ll notice from her acknowledgements that this was a labour of love, and one you could say, was worth every second. I overall highly recommend this book to anyone looking for something that will make your heart warm and shattered at the same time. 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.though i love it, i can admit that this type of literary genre or niche does tend to not have the substance you’d expect an overtly hyped book to have and often appears juvenile. I'm more of a complicated, unconventional, dark, realistic, modern-day kind of romance; where there's turbulence and you're unsure of how it will end and if they should even end up together or not. It gives the story more depth rather than focussing on just the one relationship between our two main characters.