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Cleopatra and Frankenstein

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein

By: Coco Mellors
Narrated by: Kit Griffiths
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About this listen

‘A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration. Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice’ PANDORA SYKES, author of How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right

New York is slipping from Cleo’s grasp. Sure, she’s at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn’t even have money for cigarettes. But then she meets Frank. Twenty years older, Frank's life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art—and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking. He is everything she needs right now.

Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that’s Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.

©2022 Coco Mellors (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
City Life Family Life Fiction Literary Fiction Urban Witty Inspiring City

Critic Reviews

Positively inhalable. I was intensely consumed by the world of Cleopatra and Frankenstein for a few happy days’ The Evening Standard

‘Friends who couldn’t get enough of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends will fall head over heels for Coco Mellor’s debut novel’ ES Magazine

Cleopatra and Frankenstein, the luminous debut novel from Coco Mellors, is a book about many things: It's a great, swooning love story; a shattering depiction of how addiction and mental illness warp our lives; and a perceptive, witty portrait of globalized New York. But most of all, Mellors has written a devastatingly human book, at turns sharp and tender, that marks her as the rare writer whose sentences are as beautiful as they are wise. An unforgettable read’ Sam Lansky, author of The Gilded Razor and Broken People

A character driven epic thoroughly engrossing and entirely magnificent. It is thrilling to read a book that articles with nuance and compassion the way gender impacts every part of our lives. Sometimes you can just tell that a debut novel has been percolating and perfecting inside an author's mind until it is ready to leap into-and ultimately change-the world’ Adam Eli, author of The Queer Conscience

“Mellors’ remarkably assured and sensitive debut … strongly evoke[s] Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life… At its core, it’s a novel about how love and lovers are easily misinterpreted and how romantic troubles affect friends and family. A canny and engrossing rewiring of the big-city romance.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

‘Insistent, stylish and utterly captivating, the prose just sings.’ Heidi James, author of, The Sound Mirror

What listeners say about Cleopatra and Frankenstein

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utterly absorbing

I found this really compelling, would listen whenever I could. A couple of scenes left me genuinely breathless. The narrator does an incredible job of embodying a multitude of characters

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Loved every bit of it

Beautiful narration of a book that I never wanted to end. Hard to listen at stages but also funny and humbling. Just loved it!

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10/10

couldn’t rate this high enough. loved the prose, writing style, and rich character development - can’t wait to read more from Coco Mellors after this

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Road-trip Reading

This story was wonderfully read by Kit Griffith's, who brought every character to life through her performance.

I would describe this as a modern day "Sex in the City." The characters may be spoilt and vapid, but there is heart and depth to the over-all message of this book.

Luckily, Kit Griffith's breathes warmth into each of the characters, making them more palatable than they would be in real life.

This book is extremely pretentious, but is worth a listen if you enjoy listening to stories about romance and the discovery of self through the connection shared with those around you.

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Best audio book so far

Love, love, love! Such a poetic story, read by an amazing storyteller who switches between the various accents so well.

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Absolutely stunning.

There’s so much to unpack about this novel - suffice to say that it shook me to my core. Wonderfully written and wonderfully performed.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It promised more, but was undeniably beautiful.

The beginning ceased me with what I think is one of the best first chapters I have ever read, though I must admit that I started to feel slightly detached from the relationship that this novel circulates… felt as though it slightly lost momentum in terms of plot and perhaps bit off more than it could chew.
Beautifully narrated, however. Beautiful characters, beautiful writing and a gutsy attempt to capture a spectrum of human existence. I think she pulled it off, and I definitely recommend to those who appreciate the sensitivity, sentimentality and slightly dissatisfaction literature about life offers.

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actually spectacular

really well written. great performance. not cliche. well developed characters. looked forward to my drive to work each day listening to this.

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Amazing story telling, plot wasn’t for me

The book is incredible in its ability to tell a story of two people and those in their orbit, and the voice actor aids to that amazingly.
However the plot line was a little too confronting for me.

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The narrator is perfection

Lovely troubled loved story read like an excellent slam poetry performance. The narrator overcompensated for the lack of depth in the story at times.

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