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Cleopatra and Frankenstein

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein

By: Coco Mellors
Narrated by: Kit Griffiths
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‘A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration. Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice’ PANDORA SYKES

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.

Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. 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. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse.

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.

©2022 Coco Mellors (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
City Life Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Urban Women's Fiction Heartfelt Scary Tear-jerking Witty Inspiring Thought-Provoking Marriage
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Critic reviews

Positively inhalable. I was intensely consumed by the world of Cleopatra and Frankenstein for a few happy days’ The Evening Standard

‘Friends who couldn’t get enough of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends will fall head over heels for Coco Mellor’s debut novel’ ES Magazine

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

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 Queer Conscience

“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. A canny and engrossing rewiring of the big-city romance.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

‘Insistent, stylish and utterly captivating, the prose just sings.’ Heidi James, author of, The Sound Mirror

All stars
Most relevant
Beautiful writing.
Character driven rather than plot.
Great narrator - great at all the accents.
Would definitely recommend.

Loved the narrator

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Highly recommend, the relationship between the main characters is so well observed, an intelligent and thoughtful book

Well worth the credit

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Best part about it was the narration - if she wasn’t so good then I’m not sure I would have finished it. The book is pretty good, story is compelling, but I found Cleo to be a pretty annoying main character (and Frank sometimes too). Maybe that’s the point as it’s rich and/or arty people doing rich and/or arty things, but still. Not bad, but not Normal People!

Amazing narration

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I like character-led novels, and while this story was all about the characters, for me, it was missing something. I can’t imagine the book staying with me at all. The narration was ok, I appreciated the effort to differentiate the characters voices, but I found myself wondering if the voices were consistent across the chapters. Not disappointed to have read, but equally could have skipped it.

Forgettable

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A bit slow at first as it’s a very character based book instead of plot, but really picks up halfway through as you get invested with the characters. Brilliantly read , such an ease to listen to, beautiful soft yet visual description, good writing. I didn’t think i would enjoy this i was scared i’d be bored but I actually loved it !

Brilliantly read

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