Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Cleopatra und Frankenstein

Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Cleopatra und Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

189 reviews

djenkin96's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.5

I really struggled to read this book, which was a shame after so many recommendations. I felt that things were often repeated. The author kept eluding to Cleo being like cleopatra, beautiful and captivating, however every descriptor she used made her sound odd looking. I found some parts the writer had gone into depth and created great back stories but then abandoned them with no further mention.
At the end I didn't feel like Cleo actually changed or developed as a character ? But the writer emphasises she has by new artwork. All in all I did not find myself wanting to finish it, more to move on to something else.

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carly_reads's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

“Cleopatra, the original undoer of men.” “Frankenstein sounds about right. Creator of monsters.”

When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.

Why did she feel the need to make everyone, even this waiter, like her? What a thing it must be to be indifferent to indifference.

Everything she had ever wanted to hear from a man was hers from the mouth of a girl.

If you prefer one outcome over another in life, you will likely be disappointed. I prefer nothing and am always surprised.

Sweetheart, love is humiliating. Hasn’t anyone told you that? Do you know the word humiliate comes from the Latin root humus, which means ‘earth’? That’s how love is supposed to feel. Like earth. It grounds you. All this nonsense about love being a drug, making you feel high, that’s not real. It should hold you like the earth.

This was gut wrenchingly sad. Would it be cliche if I said this is All Too Well (10 Minute Version) meets I miss you, I’m sorry by Gracie Abrams in the form of a novel?

I almost dnf’d this at first because I was worried the characters would be insufferable for 300+ pages, but as I kept reading, I realized these are some of the most flawed and realistic characters I’ve ever read. I constantly felt like I’d made up my mind about characters, and then I’d read something that would change my whole perspective. It serves as a reminder that everyone is struggling with something that you probably wouldn’t guess upon first glance. I think this is a statement on how much messed up family dynamics hurt and shape us in adulthood. It’s also about being angry, lonely, depressed, and confused and not knowing what to do about it. On a more positive note, it’s also about love, home, community, sisterhood, healing, empathy, intimacy, forgiveness, and what stillness can mean when you’ve only ever known chaos. I especially appreciated the points made about vulnerability and how sometimes it’s rewarded but not always.

As an aside, Eleanor and her mother are some of my favorite characters I’ve ever read. Funny girl representation!

I can see the Sally Rooney comparisons but I wouldn’t say they’re overtly similar in terms of writing style or characterization.

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adaora_ble's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-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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lindsaylhunter's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

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

2.0

Immensely unenjoyable dialogue delivered by immensely unlikeable characters. And yet it kept me reading to the end, so I don't know. What does that say about me?

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sigreads_'s review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

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maddalenacesco's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

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

2.75

Thing I liked the most about this book: unlikeable characters.

Thing I liked the least about this book: unlikeable characters.

Unlikeable characters are so beloved, and most importantly, work, because you understand and internalize their psyche. They force a moral conflict inside of you, you catch yourself rooting for people who do bad stuff.

I’ll give props to this book as the author is not afraid to allow them to make mistakes, nor tries to enforce the idea that you’re supposed to like certain people (although you kind of get the idea that the “Cleopatra” of the title is supposed to be the victim and that you should feel sorry for her), but there’s not an instance where you actually feel for any of them.

My main issue with this book is the characters.

Sometimes you are first told about the background of a character.

In these cases, I could predict how they’d be in their relationships with others and with themselves before the getting-to-know-them part, because said character acted perfectly in line with their background.

Other times, you are presented with the character first and then get an insight of their past. Same thing: I could figure out where their issue came from quickly.

Let’s take the chef Santiago for example: we are told he’s a successful chef in New York and that he has lost his wife, whom he loved very much, years before.

Having only been given these facts, I can guess:

Santiago’s grief has taken a toll on his mental health - with a stretch, I could predict it might have something to do with food (such as an e.d.)
Santiago might have problems with intimacy
Santiago’s storyline will follow his pursue to reaffirm himself after the loss of his wife

Thing is, people are made of contradictions, they never follow the straight line you think they will; identical backgrounds cause some to become better, others to become worse.

Due to this predictability, I often found the characters to be stereotypes:

Cleo: struggling but extremely talented artist, beautiful, object of the desire of rich older men, rough upbringing, depressed
Frank/Anders (I paired them up because they’re the same person): handsome, very successful businessman, in his forties, womanizer, addict, in love with Cleo
Eleonor: cynical, still lives with her mother, low self-esteem.

Cleo’s hippie stepmom embodies the stereotype of the self-obsessed, dizzy yoga mom. Why not throw a bit of intrigue there? She has a PHD. She actually loves Cleo. She was suspected of a murder. I don’t know.

I understand that the goal was to explore the psyche of the average individual, but this should imply making normality exceptional; that is how we experience reality, by seeing mediocrity as a fabric made of overlapping threads of feelings, fears, hopes and doubts, not as a flat wooden board. I’m not saying the characters should be exceptional, but that exceptionability should lie in their banality.

Showing Cleo had unloving parents allows me to understand why she seeks love and why she is a people pleaser, but it feels like a way to make me care about her. Pity is not a substitute for love.

You can’t care about the fate of a character if you don’t know what they want their fate to be.

The tragedy of a character lies in the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

It doesn’t have to be something extreme (nor explicit), such as: Cleo wants to murder her stepmom. It can also be: Cleo wants to make is as an artist, or Cleo wants all the men in her life to be in love with her. If I know where Cleo wants to be, I’ll be hooked to her story.

I was very excited by the prospect of many different points of view, but it kinda disappointed me, because how is it possible that the character appear to others exactly like they appear to themselves?

It doesn’t help with the lack of suspence.

Ex:

Santiago seems to like Cleo.

Santiago actually likes Cleo.

When it comes to unreliable characters, you expect them to lie to themselves, to justify their motifs, to be different to what they appear, to manipulate the truth.

The characters do bad things, yes, but the sole fact that we are given explanations (such as a description of their upbringing) is an indication they are not flat out bad people.

If I’m not an inherently evil individual (which goes against the premise of this book) I can self sabotage, but I’ll find ways to justify, if not most, a least some of my actions.

If I didn’t receive the love I needed from my father and I seek relationships with older men, cheating on my husband will be a pattern, not an isolated case. And before I can recognize why I follow this pattern, I probably won’t have the objectivity to identify the cause in my childhood, but I’ll try to justify it: my husband doesn’t give me the attention I feel I deserve/I feel trapped in my relationship/I’m lonely.

My last issue is with the relationships: Relationships are the foundation of this book, so why don’t we ever have a chance to actually see them growing? We have glimpses of pivotal moments, we are handed pre-existing friendships, we cannot savor the building of trust and intimacy that comes from simple daily interaction.

The writing was really good, I enjoyed it. Ironically, that's the main issue: I can't give 3 stars when I know you can easily reach 5. I liked the descriptions of New York. If the characters hadn’t had as much potential as they had or the writing was a little less good, I would’ve let it slide, but I expect more where I know there can be.

Also, the first dialogue was a little too fan fiction-ish.

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