Published by Bloomsbury on February 8, 2022
Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a New York City domestic drama. Boy meets girl, girl shags boy’s best friend, boy marries girl, boy thinks about shagging someone new, girl shags boy’s best friend again, boy dyes his graying chest hair after losing girl, and so on. I won’t spoil the ending, not that it is difficult to predict. All of that happens in the context of a New York City novel — boy and girl rag about New York while living with the certainty that every other American city is worse — and an older man, younger woman relationship. So yes, you’ve read this book before. Fortunately, Coco Mellors crafts an enjoyable story, even if she can’t make it fresh.
Frank and Cleo have recently married. Frank is in his forties, Jewish on his father’s side and Catholic on his mother’s, a New Yorker who started his own advertising agency. Cleo is a British artist in her twenties. Her student visa was about to expire when she married Frank. The marriage was convenient for Cleo but they love each other, despite being less than perfectly matched. Cleo is bothered by Frank’s alpha-male competitiveness, by his drinking, by his desire to live for the purpose of accumulating stories about his life. Frank is bothered by Cleo’s unceasing demands for attention and by her efforts to change him. Both suffer from a constant need to prove to the world that they are interesting, worthy of notice, perhaps worthy of love.
Nineteen-year-old Zoe is Frank’s half-sister. Frank believes she was the product of “a last ditch effort to create a shared interest with [his mother’s] second husband.” Zoe is an actor. Strangers do not believe they are siblings because Frank looks like a “vaguely Jewish” white guy and Zoe is dark and breathtaking. Zoe is broke but financially dependent on Frank for rent and tuition, although she’d like to find a way to be self-sufficient without actually making an effort that would get in the way of nightly partying and random hookups.
Cleo’s father is Peter, a man so wrapped up in his new family that he barely recalls he has a daughter. Cleo lost her mother to suicide after her divorce from Peter. Cleo’s stepmother is Miriam, who teaches workshops on healing the inner child. During a lunch at Grand Central Station’s Oyster Bar, it becomes clear that Cleo’s relationship with Peter and Miriam needs healing. It’s easy to understand why Cleo is such a mess.
Frank’s best friends are Santiago (a Peruvian chef whose wife apparently died from a heroin overdose) and Anders (a Scandinavian former model who quit working for Frank to take over the art department of a women’s fashion magazine). Whether they are good friends or the sort of people who betray each other or both is a question that adds to the domestic drama. Cleo’s best friend (before meeting Frank) is Quentin, who broke up with Johnny and sporadically dates Alex. Every woman in a modern domestic drama needs a gay friend and confidant; Quentin fills that role.
After a third of the story has been told, Eleanor Rosenthal appears. Eleanor is in her late thirties. After getting fired as a screenwriter in LA, she moved to New York to live with her mother (her father is in a home for people with Alzheimer’s). Eleanor took a temp job as a copywriter in New York at Frank’s agency. She sits next to an editor named Myke, who tells her about Frank’s hot young British wife. Eleanor googles Cleo because Eleanor is insecure. Seeing Cleo’s picture doesn’t improve her confidence.
Coco Mellors takes her deepest dive into Eleanor. Or perhaps, not being obsessed with New Yorkiness, Eleanor’s personality is less superficial than the other characters. Her insecurity is almost endearing. Eleanor deals with feelings of loss, unfulfilled desires, and an inability to decide which desires she really wants to fulfill. A late chapter devoted to Eleanor provides the novel’s funniest moments. Her mother offers the book’s greatest insight: The space between the words “so what” holds the key to “a free and happy life.”
Cleo and Frank offer ordinary insights into why relationships fail. They blame each other for their faults. Frank uses Cleo as an excuse for his drinking. Cleo uses Frank as an excuse for her self-harm. Each blames the other for being self-pitying and in that regard, they each have a point. They are about equally self-centered. Ultimately, each wants the other to be someone else, although each knew exactly what they were getting when they chose to marry. Cleo resents that “the onus is on her to fix” Frank but it’s not. The onus is on her to accept Frank or to encourage his better tendencies, not to change him into the person she wants him to be. Just as the onus is on Frank to listen to Cleo rather than putting words in her mouth. The story offers typical insights into the inability of self-centered people to sustain relationships.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein checks all the boxes of a New York domestic drama, from Quentin’s desire to be a female to marital infidelity to alcohol and drug abuse to unresolved resentment of parents living and dead to unlovable characters moaning that no one loves them to friends who are collected as accessories. And, of course, New Yorkers making fun of LA. Like many New Yorkers, the characters seem to think that living in New York is enough to make them superior to other Americans. To her credit, however, Mellors makes it clear that leaving New York behind is the best thing that could happen to Cleo.
A chapter that recounts Frank and Eleanor’s “getting to know each other” period is filled with amusing sentences. I particularly enjoyed “We go to an Irish bar around the corner that smells of salted nuts and disappointment.” The characters trade the kind of witty dialog that is effortless to imaginary people.They are never inarticulate, never at a loss for words. In uglier times, Frank and Cleo scream at each other in scenes that might make a reader cringe. They left me feeling exhausted, as if I had been in the fight. It is a tribute to Mellors that her prose drew me so intimately into the story.
A reader’s reaction to a domestic drama may depend on whether the reader relates to, or at least cheers for, any of the significant characters. I liked Eleanor and eventually developed a reader’s fondness for Frank and Cleo, perhaps because they are both on the road to overcoming their selfish tendencies as the novel nears its end. Still, the characters are all walking clichés. A “talk it all out” chapter at the end is predictable, as is the ending. Mellors contributes nothing new to the stale genre of New York domestic drama. Fans of the genre will probably love Cleopatra and Frankenstein. Despite the familiar story. I’m recommending it for Mellors’ prose and her ability to make tiresome characters interesting.
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