Reviews with content warning for Classism - Cleopatra und Frankenstein

Reviews tagging 'Classism'

Cleopatra und Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

13 reviews

paulawind's review against another edition

reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Rich People’s Problems but Wait, They All Have Tragic Backstories: A Novel

The only reason I finished this book was because it is my Book Club novel. I fought and sweated my way through page by page because it’s just so bad. It’s part of the trend for authors to try to make their books “deeper” by flooding every character with trauma. Pain Porn if you prefer.

The author thought that by giving each character a single-defining struggle she is making them less one-dimensional but because of that they felt almost like cartoon characters. Cleo - beautiful, thin, talented, young BUT WAIT she is depressed and has both mummy and daddy issues; Frank - beautiful, “manly”, successful, rich and older BUT WAIT he had mummy issues and is an alcoholic, Zoe - beautiful, thin, talented BUT WAIT she has seizures, Quentin - beautiful, thin, rich “snarky gay best friend” BUT WAIT he can’t come out of the closet because of his homophobic Polish family (fuck you for that Coc, enforcing Polish stereotypes) and is a drug addict, Anders - beautiful, thin, rich fuckboy BUT WAIT his step-son doesn’t like him anymore and his parents don’t visit him in the US. You see what I mean? The only half-decent characters are Eleanor and Santiago, just because they are not awful to other people, but they rarely are given voice and in the end are pushed into the role of “I can fix him” girl for Frank and “losing weight will let you find love”, respectively. Nauseating. TikTok girlies, wake up, this is not literary fiction you claim it to be.

The book obviously features a lot of content warnings - wouldn’t be a pain porn without it - but I’m not sure if it’s handled even passably well.

Cleo’s depression and its consequences, Frank’s alcoholism, Zoe’s inability to live without a trust fund, Anders’s familial infidelity - all get magically solved by the end, with no depth or mental insight given on any of the aforementioned. Cleo started painting and moved to Italy - depression solved; Frank “got fixed” by his mummy to-be-wife; Zoe just found herself a sugar daddy; and Anders swept the whole issue under the rug. We can’t of course forget that the happy ending is only given to straight people - queers go to hell with our only rep - Quentin - ending up a meth head and most likely dying

This book angered me on so many levels. It was the superficial depth, wannabe literary fiction, over sexualisation of everything (Zoe saying that she is “a real girl” now, after climaxing, nauseated me), disrespectful treatment of a lot of extremely heavy issues and -how could I forget - BLATANT plagiarism of other media (yes, I’m looking at you ripped-off Fleabag dinner scene). Awful

Content Warnings

lemonyanne's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book feels like you’re invited into the world of well-off socialite New York as a total voyeur. You’d never want to be part of this circle as all the characters are flawed and unlikeable in their own ways. However, Cleo and Frank’s relationship IS interesting and this discussion of how they destroy one another in the mutual distraction of themselves is why you keep reading it. You don’t want to look away from the car crash on the highway. (SPOILERS:) However, Eleanor’s 2 chapters felt really misplaced. First person was the wrong choice for her (esp when then rest of the novel is in third) and felt like an ill-attempt at making her feel normal, relatable or quirky - this I think was the more unsuccessful element of her narrative. I also don’t think she was Frank’s saving grace and I’m unsure if she was written to be. Although, her pining love for Frank could serve as an interesting contrasting how Anders pined for Cleo, as Eleanor’s love showed far more compassion, maturity and self-awareness as opposed to Anders’ vapid, self-absorbed obsession with Cleo was. All in all, this book felt like reading gossip, and for that purpose it worked fabulously.

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afternoondreamer's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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garfriendofmine's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

aleilvandrea's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

solspringsreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I enjoyed this book, but I definitely wish I’d known about several big trigger warnings that were complete shocks to me (including multiple graphic animal deaths and transphobia that results in violence—I had no clue that this book involved animals OR queer people before reading). These missing warnings didn’t negatively impact my reading of the book, but they feel symptomatic of what is maybe a larger issue I had with the book: there were a lot of scenes that felt maybe gratuitously violent/detailed in a way that was almost unnecessary for the actual plot.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is pretty much what it says on the tin (and the plot summary): a book about a couple with a large age gap who are both deeply flawed individuals, and the ways their relationship affects the people in their lives as well as how their lives are affected in turn. I didn’t expect this book to have shifting perspectives in each chapter and to focus so heavily on characters aside from the two titular protagonists, but I actually found myself preferring the chapters that gave us insight into the larger context of Cleo and Frank’s relationship. Although I wish I could get more context for certain characters and the changes in their lives, it almost felt true to life: sometimes the people you care about extremely deeply will have major life changes that you know almost nothing about, and you don’t get closure. This also felt like it was reflective of how self-absorbed Cleo and Frank were, in that their friends like Quentin and Zoe were going through some significant life changes and crises of their own, but by the end of the book we get little to no information on the outcomes of these events. From a realism standpoint, this was amazing… but from a reader’s standpoint, I definitely felt sad that the most of an ending I could get for my favorite characters was “They hopefully aren’t dead in a ditch.” On the other hand, during each characters’ respective chapter, we got a significant amount of insight into their personal lives with only limited references to the titular characters in a way that felt kind of unnecessary to the plot; sure, I get that pointing out the irony of an overweight culinary master who’s on a pretty strict diet is Fun Social Commentary™ and the fact that Cleo and Frank barely know about this characters’ struggle or reference it during their chapters is reflective of their self-involvement, but like… again, as a reader, part of me feels like these scenes are such unnecessary tangents to the protagonists’ actual character arcs. Most of the changes and “growth” that Cleo and Frank have and go through feel random and unearned, like the novel has to explicitly tell us that they’ve changed because we spent so much time focusing on Anders’s strained relationship with his son.

Relatedly, the dialogue in this book gets kinda silly. I listened to the audiobook so my impressions of certain scenes might be very different than those of a reader of a physical copy, but there were several bits of dialogue that had me rolling my eyes. Chapter 13 is one particularly example of this issue: somehow, the dialogue between Cleo and Frank felt simultaneously too realistic and too forced, like the author couldn’t decide if she wanted to capture what arguments were actually like (including the awkward pauses, the ways people cut each other off) or what arguments felt like (focusing on the inner turmoil of each character between the lines or the minute cues of body language to show how they feel). The characters constantly talked around their issues, which is again, true to life, but unfortunately the nothing-dialogue can lead to some pretty lackluster “big fight” scenes.

There are lots of stereotypes abound in a way that is almost maybe social commentary until you look up the author and see that she is a conventionally attractive cis blonde woman and suddenly you go, “Wow, this is a book that has a lot of transphobia during the narration from a character who is heavily implied if not outright stated to be a trans woman, and while it’s positioned in a way that feels like it’s supposed to be representative of internalized transphobia, this does maybe feel weird in the broader context of this being a book about the relationship between two flawed mostly-heterosexual cisgender people!” Likewise, LOTS of really random comments about race and ethnic stereotypes that feel like they should maybe be satire except that they’re completely unchallenged… or challenged in a way that the book immediately mocks. Maybe there’s an argument that the book as a whole is satirical, and while it does have moments where that feels clear, it often clumsily treads the fine line between making fun of stereotypes and perpetuating those same stereotypes.

Despite everything, though, I was totally wrapped up in this book. I binged the whole audiobook during a knitting-induced frenzy (which resulted in an all-nighter) and still felt so awed by how beautiful certain parts of the prose sounded, especially during Santiago and Eleanor’s chapters, and the philosophical ideas explored during Zoe’s chapters. I became emotionally invested in these somewhat stereotypical characters for an evening, and I truly do feel like there are moments and scenes from this book that will stay with me even now that I’ve finished it.

Overall, this was a pretty standard entry in the subcategory of litfic about beautiful yet waifish blondes who do a lot of drugs in New York and feel miserable about the older men and so-called friends with which they surround themselves. Somehow, the hype is completely understandable and yet overdone in a way that’s to be expected for this type of novel. (There’s always hype around books about sad beautiful women with addictions living in big cities, even if those books are mostly the same.) Despite my many criticisms and the fact that this book isn’t particularly unique in its plot or commentary, I still mostly enjoyed this and would (VERY VERY tentatively and with many caveats and warnings) recommend this to others, if only to discuss some of the things I might take issue with in the book.

Content Warnings

lidia7's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

took me a while to get into it (about 20%) and i thought i was going to dnf but then i ended up reading 80% or more of the book in one night.
love the writing style
a lot of TWs, sorry if i forgot some

Content Warnings