Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

Cleópatra e Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

77 reviews

sofiarf's review against another edition

3.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship

Moderate: Animal death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Death of parent

alisbleu's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Drug use, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Blood, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Terminal illness, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Drug abuse, Suicide, Death of parent

alayarocco's review against another edition

2.25

medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Nothing much of substance.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Vomit, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Terminal illness, Medical content, Death of parent

booksofpanda's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional funny 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

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A great debut novel that I almost couldn’t put aside. Coco Mellors describes in Cleopatra and Frankenstein a love story that doesn’t feel like one at all. Instead her novel is full of tragedy, everyday reality, absurdities and heartbreaking honesty. The story revolves around the name giving couple Cleo and Frank, but also around their friends and family and their lives in New York. It is told from all their different perspectives. The author describes with refreshing bluntness the different sides of a toxic relationship as well as other hard topics like loss, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide and depression. This novel has moved me in many ways and made me feel all sorts of feelings from rage to pity up to sadness. It also made me laugh a lot about many absurdities that you get to experience when you live in New York. At times I thought the chapters were a bit too long. All in all an absolute pageturner that doesn’t feel like reading a debut novel. I can’t wait to read what’s next to come from Coco Mellors.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship

Moderate: Mental illness, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Sexual harassment

maddalenacesco's review against another edition

2.75

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

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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:

1. 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.)
2. Santiago might have problems with intimacy
3. 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Death, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Blood, Dementia, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Alcohol

sydneynorman's review against another edition

4.25

dark emotional funny hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship, Alcohol

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Homophobia, Terminal illness, Abandonment

Minor: Forced institutionalization

kimmykelly's review against another edition

3.5

challenging emotional funny sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Homophobia, Mental illness, Self harm, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent

thehexgirlfriend's review against another edition

3.75

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Infidelity, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt

Minor: Animal death

racheltrow_'s review against another edition

4.25

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Well that was great but now I’m quite depressed. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Homophobia, Self harm, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Sexual harassment

mariaminthebooks's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I'm torn between giving this 3 or 4 stars. Let's settle for 3.5/5 

Stating the obvious, the book flows like a river. The writing's great, descriptions' great yada yada yada...

Finished the book in 3 days. That says enough.

Now, the interesting stuff...

I found the main character insufferable, which is absolutely fine, characters do NOT have to be likeable, but Mellors tried SO hard to make her  likeable by mentioning just how likeable she is (how convenient) which made me dislike her even more. 

TW// 

The book also features PRETTY heavy themes like alcoholism, drug abuse, animal cruelty, su!cide, self-h@rm, and the list goes on....without ever really diving into the complexity and complications of each struggle, thereby making the character's problems seem shallow (they are not!!!) 

Along with having like a bazillion unnecessary characters, this, too, was unnecessary. Towards the end of the book, it felt as if Mellors was just throwing in as much trauma as she possibly can for that shocker effect. Unfortunately, that had a counter effect. It made me desensitised to much of the events in the novel. 

traumatised characters ≠ unconditional sympathy

I've read books with way fewer events going on but had a much deeper attachment to the characters.

Frustratingly, this could have been such a good book....

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Sexual harassment