A review by fatimaelf
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

dark emotional 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

4.0

So I thought this book was going to be about an abusive relationship, probably because of the woman with a bruised eye on the cover, but it’s not, really. It’s about dysfunctional relationships, and about how the people we’re surrounded by influence us, and how we influence the people surrounding us. I won’t lie, I wouldn’t have picked up this book had it not been assigned by book club. The first chapter had me rolling my eyes hard; it felt like a dissertation on the patriarchy disguised as a novel. I was surprised that each chapter switched focus to different characters, and I will say that each character had a distinct voice and journey. It was well written, edging to the point of pretentious and maybe crossing over a few (many) times. My favorite chapter was Santiago’s, which surprised me considering I’d completely forgotten he existed by the time we got to him. I also really liked Eleanor, and the choice to make her chapters alone first-person, stream-of-consciousness POV was both risky and rewarding. Her observations were funny and fun to follow along with. 

Everyone else was fucked up, but I’ll give Mellors credit in that you fully understand why they’re fucked up, and you empathize with them. The character I was most disappointed by was Quentin. He got one chapter, which sort of examined his gender dysphoria and then
backed completely off it to get him addicted to meth.
He felt like a very one-dimensional “gay character,” and he became incredibly unlikeable for it. 

There were two things that took away from the enjoyment of the book for me: first, and most glaringly, once you realize that Cleo is just a self-insert for the author, it’s very hard to take the book seriously. Especially with the amount of time Cleo’s complimented on her beauty, and how everyone loves her, and how in comparison Eleanor is “sturdy” like a fucking tree — yeah, it’s weird. Every time Cleo was mentioned it was impossible to forget she was functionally the author because of her long flowing blonde hair and mysterious air — buddy, you could’ve at least made her brunette for plausible deniability. 

The second problem was the fact that Cleo felt it was appropriate
to recreate the scene of her suicide attempt, and force Frank, who found her, to relive it.
That was FOUL. Like that was so incredibly fucked up I’m genuinely stunned it happened. Obviously I’m not going to insist that a book follow my own morality and such, but the fact that it was presented as growth for Cleo, as the end of her arc, is messed up and borderline unforgivable. Frank was kind of a dick because, well, he was an alcoholic and also married a woman twenty years younger than him, but he didn’t deserve that.

Side note: nobody in this fucking book deserved to have a pet. Yeah, I’m looking at you too, Anders, you shithead.

In the end, I think the book did what it set out to do — show the dysfunction in interpersonal relationships — and I think the writing was good, and the characters were interesting. I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t say I loved it. 
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