Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

18 reviews

maddalenacesco's review

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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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aestinson's review

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.25

I'm slightly biased on my review because this story really hit home for me. It was too painful for me to even pick it up again after a year.

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chloewiart's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

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

4.0

I wasn't expecting to be touched like that by this book. This was a really good surprise. This book put me through a whole range of emotions and I found myself sad, angry and even scared. I like the fact that this book was a collection of life changing moments (some obvious and other more subtle) of different people who could be you or me.

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freyanjani's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective 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

3.5

the reviews for this are a mess and so was it. i guess it’s trying to do the whole mediocre people in mediocre situations, human relationships type of reflective story but it just didn’t hit the way it’s supposed to. it’s too long, for one. and the narrative is all over the place, which i usually dont mind, but it just seemed erratic—maybe that’s the whole theme i dont know. lots of the characters are so stereotypical of their race/sexuality, in my opinion, and there were some parts that i think was unnecessary and even a little offensive.

(see: sugar glider)

it got better right at the end and i finally felt the warm, emotional feeling i was supposed to get the whole book. i can appreciate this book, but i don’t love it and it’s such a shame because i REALLY wanted to.

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hannalizzy's review

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense slow-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

5.0

If the song “I’m wearing his boxers/I cry in his bathroom, he turns off the big light” song “Complex” by Katie Gregson-MacLeod from tiktok was a book, this would be it. Or “You’re On Your Own, Kid” by Taylor Swift from Midnights. Or “Moon Song” by Phoebe Bridgers. Take your pick. If any of those songs break you, this book will finish the job 😭❤️‍🩹

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a literary fiction masterpiece and in-depth character study. It’s the type of book that readers need to put some work into — you learn about the characters passively, by connecting the dots between their dialogue and their actions/behaviors. It’s a book worth annotating because so much is said between the lines.

Throughout the book you go from loving Cleo and Frank to hating them both, individually and as a couple. They’re messy, flawed, toxic people who bring out the worst in each other, and yet: “when the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.”

It’s as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. It’s raw, it’s messy, it’s human. 5/5 stars⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Definitely adult content w/ triggering subjects. Check for content warnings ❤️‍🩹

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ynotlime's review

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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neevechristine's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

This took me longer to read than the average book, but the final 100 pages I read in one sitting. In the final 10 pages I was crying and banging the book against my head. It’s gorgeous and heartbreaking and raw. It filled a void I didn’t know existed

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smallcasualbooktok's review

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.75

when I finished this book, I felt simlarly to the way I felt when i finished normal people. This book made me think about relationships so differently and i really felt like i learned something about human behavior at the end of it. i could not set the book down was so drawn in by the story and felt every emotion. Immediately I wanted to read it again. I really want to give this book 5 stars and do think I will eventually read this book again, which I only do with 5 star reads. The prose was beautiful and the settings were incredible, I felt like I was in New York, France, and Italy. I cried twice in this book, and I haven't cried at a book since My Dark Vanessa last year. The ONLY THING that has brought my rating down from a 5 is I just felt there's too many loose ends at the end. Normally, I'm fine with ambiguous endings, but too many of the characters here just felt...unfinished at the end (Zoe, Quentin, etc). I may eventually get over this feeling but I typically only like to give 5 stars to books that I feel are absolutely perfect.

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