Trigger warning: Cleopatra and Frankenstein contains discussions of suicide and depictions of self-harm and drug abuse.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein, based around a struggling artist who quickly marries an advertiser for the green card, is a heartbreaker. Coco Mellors, who released this first book in the UK two years ago now, manages to force her reader to invest in a relationship that leaves you questioning if who and what you’re rooting for is right at all. Through parallel storylines, the reader sees the same relationship through different perspectives with varying levels of knowledge of it, providing a sense of clarity and frustration at what’s really going on.
The setting surrounds the romantic iconography of New York, with the highs in the book having NYC appear like a rich Pinterest dream. Despite moving to New York as a teenager and knowing it much better than the average British reader who’s never been to New York, Mellors does not gatekeep the city from the reader. Whilst you may have never been to an art gallery in Chinatown or a brownstone in the Bronx, Mellors fills out the world of New York City in a way that complements the characters but doesn’t intimidate or isolate the reader.
The book surrounds characters with vastly different experiences and backgrounds, many of which are generally unrelatable to the average reader due to their lavish and seemingly financially unlimited lifestyles. Despite this, every character is made vulnerable in their own way, meaning that whilst every reader has a favourite, the book leaves you wishing the characters nothing but the best, and the sincere hope that even though they aren’t real, they all get a happy ending somehow.
With the magic yet bleakness of any true romantic relationship, Cleopatra and Frankenstein exposes the truly romantic cloud-nine moments of a relationship that make you hope that the couple stay together forever, but also the soul-shattering lows that has you begging for either character to run for the hills, filling you with a temporary hatred for their spouse. Until of course, the next chapter is from their perspective, providing the reader a slow and cautious emotional retreat.
Without giving too much away, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is the ideal summer read for anyone whose love life has faced any form of turmoil recently. Whilst acting as an emotional rollercoaster, it also serves as a harsh lesson that sometimes, relationships and witnessing them, shouldn’t involve side-taking or the involvement of others at all, as the only people who truly know how it functions, is the people in them.
Featured Image Credit: Jess Urquhart