Whatever has passed between Cleo and Frank - dates, arguments, a proposal - has occurred off the page. It’s a daring leap for the lovers and also for Mellors, her fast-forward a clever way of rendering courtship as a heedless blur, the details only coming into focus once a marriage has set (or curdled). It’s a scant six months later, and the pair’s friends are as surprised as the reader. The next scene opens on the couple’s wedding day. Their first conversation turns into an exchange of witty remarks that leads to dinner and flirtation. They’ve both left a New Year’s Eve party. Hers is a city of flash and fluttering movement, as if deliberately designed to distract its inhabitants (or those Mellors chooses to depict) from seeing that, beneath the surface, there’s no there there.Ĭleo - beautiful, blond and British - meets Frank - older, handsome and an award-winning advertising executive - in an elevator 90 minutes before the first day of 2007. If Manhattan were a drug, which one would it be? This is one of the profound questions raised by reading Coco Mellors’ tantalizing but blithe debut novel, “ Cleopatra and Frankenstein,” whose Manhattanites run on stimulants and drown in alcohol. 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.If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse.

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. Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art-and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. Twenty years older, Frank's life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo's lacks. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn’t even have money for cigarettes. Sure, she’s at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice’ PANDORA SYKES, author ofHow Do We Know We’re Doing It Right ‘A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration.

For readers of and, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.Modern LoversConversations with Friends

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