Cleo’s in her mid-20s, a struggling English artist trying to make it in New York. Frank’s in his mid-40s, a successful American ad exec. The two meet by chance and begin a whirlwind romance - Cleopatra and Frankenstein (their nicknames for each other) is the story of their relationship.
Coco Mellors’ debut novel is a character piece rather than a story-driven book, which isn’t a bad thing but can be a bit of an albatross if the characters aren’t that interesting and there’s no solid narrative to fall back on - which is pretty much the case here. That isn’t to say I disliked Cleopatra and Frankenstein - it’s well-written and parts of it are really compelling - but it’s also very predictable and ultimately feels quite forgettable.
This isn’t the longest book - my edition ran to 368 pages - but it does feel more substantial than that, partly because of the richness of the scenes, which are detailed and carefully constructed (Mellors mentions in her acknowledgments that this book took over seven years to write, and I believe her; this isn’t some bestselling author cranking out this year’s contractual obligation, but someone who’s really worked on their book), and partly from the abundance of characters who get their own chapters, in addition to Cleo and Frank’s.
There’s Zoe, Frank’s younger half-sister, an epileptic student who makes questionable decisions; Santiago, an obese chef who becomes increasingly famous for his cooking but has a tragic past; Quentin, Cleo’s gay druggy friend who falls in with a bad lot; Anders, Frank’s promiscuous business partner and old friend; and Eleanor, the new hire at Frank’s ad agency, with a rapier wit and a dying father.
They’re a fairly colourful bunch but giving them each entire chapters felt wholly irrelevant and indulgent, particularly as almost all of them aren’t that interesting and don’t really have a whole lot to do with Cleo and Frank’s relationship. Except for Eleanor, for obvious reasons, but also because her chapters, the only ones written in the first person, were easily among the best in the novel - her acerbic voice with its sharp observations was highly entertaining.
Mellors unexpectedly manages to explain the reasoning behind this approach right at the end with the starling analogy, which was poetic, but it doesn’t make those extraneous chapters any better to read. I suppose you could argue that, because all the characters’ stories revolve around relationships, their inclusion adds to the theme of love and its complexities, but with a title naming the two main characters, I feel like it would’ve been a more powerful story if it had been focused on Cleo and Frank entirely, rather than constantly jumping to a side character’s pointless incidences.
Cleo and Frank aren’t bad characters but they’re also fairly banal. They had shitty childhoods and have problems like alcoholism and depression - but these aren’t unique and Mellors doesn’t write them in any especially new light. I didn’t hate either but nor did I like them all that much and found it hard to really care about what they were up to, or their relationship as a whole - which is a problem when the entire novel is based around said relationship!
(I wonder if Mellors was aware of all of this and was subtly commenting on this aspect of her novel through Eleanor’s TV show pitch, Human Garbage - probably not, it’s a bit of a stretch.)
The story, such as it is, was really predictable. From the moody cover, to the way the novel starts off so positively, you knew how the relationship was going to play out, and when Eleanor was introduced and immediately took over scores of pages, you knew her role in this as well - and it all plays out just so. Even with the minor characters, you could tell what was going to happen, like when Santiago mentions admiring a woman in his weight management class, or when Quentin falls for a druggy boy who introduces him to meth. Gee, I wonder what’ll happen to either of them…
The dialogue is very strong and quite believable. The fight in the cabin is utterly compelling and Eleanor’s chapters were great fun. It’s a credit to Mellors’ writing that I was able to recall all of the characters’ names and their storylines without having to refer to the book - she’s certainly gifted at characterisation - and the fact that she was able to write an entire novel about a fairly ordinary relationship without it being boring is also quite something.
It does drag towards the end - the novel ends about 50 pages before it actually does so it’s a bit of a dull slog to the finish line - and, not that every novel needs this, but I wasn’t sure what the point of it all was, whether Mellors had a message or idea she was trying to express. I don’t think she did, but it might’ve helped make the story more memorable if she did.
Overall it’s not a bad read, I just wished it had more than it did. It’s essentially about an unremarkable relationship between two unlikeable people and their unlikeable friends that’s ultimately unimpressive for not having much about it that’s unique or different. It lacks that need to find out what happens next so that it’s very easy to put down a lot of the time. It’s also a solid version of a relationship story, one that’s not too flat or indistinct. It’s well-written, parts of it are undeniably good, and the characterisation is decent.
I didn’t love it but I’m still glad I read Cleopatra and Frankenstein - a fine first novel that actually deserves its Sally Rooney comparisons (so long as your expectations are more in line with Rooney’s first novel than her second)!
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