Cleopatra and Frankenstein Summary
Coco Mellors

Cleopatra and Frankenstein Overview

Coco Mellor's literary fiction novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein uses a third-person limited omniscient narrator to portray the collapse of a green-card marriage from several perspectives, occasionally shifting to first-person to capture the diversity of voices. Through Mellor's cast of characters, readers experience the dangers of numbing loneliness with substance abuse in an impulsive, isolated New York City. Cleo and Frank, Mellor's main couple, suffer from depression and alcoholism that is thinly cloaked by a veneer of witty meet-cutes and glamorous parties. Mellors underscores happiness as a tight-rope walk that can be difficult to navigate by exploring themes of age, excess and lack, beauty and ugliness, and belonging with lost identity.