Reviews with content warning for Violence - Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

49 reviews

alternatina's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-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

3.25

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juhmeejohns's review

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dark emotional funny 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

2.0

I hate this book. It’s like fleabag but less smart. I dont think

its fair that Frank gets to live a happy changed life and we get stuck with not knowing what happens with Cleo. I think its a disservice to not give an inkling of hope that she can be better. I don’t think Frank was redeemed. Santiago was the only one with a happy ending. The emotional and physical violence thats described to happen only to Cleo was devastating. No one got what they deserved, it was deeply disturbing and unsatisfying.

Upon reflection i hate this book

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emilysshelf's review

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This book felt like someone trying way too hard to be edgy and artsy. I understand that everyone is flawed but the characters in this book were wildly irritating and all toxic. The dynamics in the friend group were frustrating and I found it hard to care for any of them. I had heard lots of love for this book and was super excited but was definitely let down. Most of the characters were so self absorbed. The age-gap, and “but shes an old soul and so mature for her age” personality had me stressed. Book was insufferable and it genuinely stressed me out, I couldn’t even hate-read and push through it. Maybe in the future I’ll try to reread but it’ll be in the FAR future once the sour taste it left in my mouth is gone.

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paulawind's review

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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

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kimmberr's review against another edition

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

5.0

i think Coco Mellors is genuinely becoming one of my favorite authors. she writes stories about people who feel so real and broken and raw. the books aren't plot driven, they're all people driven. and the people all mess up a lot, but she somehow pulls out the beauty in all of it. I will be thinking about this book for a long time

i technically would dock points for the couple chapters written from the random friends' povs (Quinten and Santiago) because i don't feel they added anything to the storyline, but the rest of the book was strong enough to me that i am choosing to ignore those 2 chapters

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lenabump's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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chloel29's review

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-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

2.0

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leahmaslin's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad slow-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

3.0

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xabbeylongx's review against another edition

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challenging funny slow-paced

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

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

This book was recommended to me by a friend. They said it was heartbreaking, and it was the best thing they’d ever read. I’ve had this book for about a year now, but with all of my university reading, I kept putting off, but last month, I finally got round to reading it.

We follow Cleo and Frank as they meet, Cleo from England and Frank from America. She’s visiting America, but wants to stay, and her and Frank have this really quick marriage, made up mostly of physical attraction, and that means she has the Visa to stay in America.

They don’t have a conventional marriage, and, suffice it to say, it doesn’t end well, or last very long. Cleo is trying to be an artist, but her mother committed suicide, and she herself is on antidepressants, and being with Frank makes that worse for her. She struggles to find the motivation to make art every day, so sits at home and doesn’t really do much, which means she doesn’t get to become an artist whilst with him. Frank has an alcoholic as a mother, and he often drinks his life away. He was also falling for one of his work colleagues, Eleanor, and Cleo read the emails. She wanted a change, wanted him to change, and asked Frank to stop drinking, but he didn’t, and she self-harmed. He found her, bleeding out, and she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. They realised soon after that they wouldn’t work, and they separated. It wasn’t until Frank got back in touch with Eleanor, and they started dating - he was no longer a drunk, and was in an AA group - that he realised he was happy. Eleanor made him go and check that she was okay, and they knew they were going to have to start the process of a divorce.

Eleanor’s dad died, and she had to sit Shiva. He had been suffering for ages, with a neurodegenerative disease. Her brother manages to find the time to come and see him whilst he’s dying, and they find out his girlfriend, Min, is actually pregnant. All the whilst, she knows she wants Frank, so finally gets him to come over.

By this time, Cleo and Frank’s friendship groups merge. Anders is a classic fuckboy, who Cleo actually slept with after Frank was too busy drinking to see her. She fell for him, but he left before she could get closure, and she holds it against him. As it is he has a son which isn’t biologically is, but emotionally is, called Jonah. He gets on well with Jonah’s mum, after dating her for 6 years, but when he moves away, Jonah no longer comes to visit him. He spends his days with other women, and he has a puppy whom he doesn’t really know how to care for.

Zoe, Frank’s half sister, doesn’t like Cleo at first, but she finds her and Audrey, Cleo’s friend, are better friends to her than anyone else has been, so she grows on her. Zoe doesn’t have a lot of money, and Frank doesn’t give her any more after a while, so she has to earn money herself. She ends up finding the pleasure that is masturbation, and becomes a sugar baby, where she gets paid to keep someone company: enter Jiro.

Santiago is trying to lose weight, having always been the ‘fat friend’ in his group. The leader, Dominique, he ends up asking out. He falls in love with her, and they get married.

Quentin, well, the less said about him, the better. He becomes a raging drug addict. His boyfriend at the time, Johnny, is mean to him, so they break up. Quentin likes to dress up in women’s clothes, which Johnny doesn’t like. He goes to a group orgy and he meets Alex, who gets him more into drugs than he already is. Cleo and Quentin used to be friends, but he got angry and distant when Cleo married Frank, and was a really awful, passive aggressive friend to her. Eventually, he is spending all his time with Alex and he invites Cleo over. He says he has run out of money, and needs some of hers, and attacks her. Fortunately, she manages to escape, and she tries to get him help, but he has no one, and she doesn’t know where he is anymore, as they’ve lost contact.

This took me ages to finish. I don’t know what it was, I just could not get into it. For me, there wasn’t a clear storyline or plot. I went into it thinking it was a relationship, and then I found out it wasn’t really a conventional relationship at all. Which I actually quite like, because there are a lot of books which are very corny, cliched, and this definitely wasn’t, and I really liked that aspect. I liked all the ‘taboo’ subjects which aren’t too often talked about, like the addiction, alcoholism, weight loss, mental health, etc etc. I like the fact that each character is facing their own battle, because I think that’s really realistic, and it shows that you never know what someone is going through really. Despite this, I think the thing for me was that I just didn’t understand it. To me, it felt like it wasn’t really going anywhere, there was a lot of stuff happening all at once, and it was very confusing. I didn’t bond well with the characters, although I think their humour was the best part about the novel, and I think that there were so many different POVs, and, in my opinion, they could have all be different books. This book, for me, wasn’t really about Cleo and Frank, even though they’re the ones that brought everyone together. There were a lot of other people I found - dare I say it - much more interesting, that I think would benefit from telling their own story. I would have happily read a whole story about Zoe and Jiro, or even just Eleanor (Eleanor was my favourite character, if you want to know). Also, the ending was a little bit anticlimactic, and it feels like there should have been a more distinct ending. If they had had separate books, I could have found out what happened to them all after the divorce, what Anders and Santiago was up to - and I was intrigued about his weight loss journey - and, most importantly how Zoe was getting on. I even felt like I didn’t really know what happened to Quentin after, which I suppose isn’t the worst thing, but we move. If the endings were done to symbolise Cleo and Frank separating and moving on, then that’s a great ending, but I need to see a continuance novel to give it a higher rating. I’m a little disappointed, I can’t lie, but I’m glad I got it finished.

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ktwoolen's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense 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

5.0

Tore me apart in the best way. I love the reflective writing in this book and the raw depiction of human nature and relationships.

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