Absolutely wonderful. Various voices, various perspectives, various backgrounds = surrounded by love, mental health, addiction, and nuances. Brilliant. ( )

Somehow this book felt fast and slow paced at the same time. The first ~40% was a struggle to me because of this (I hate using this word but it was a bit... cringe...).

The issues really settled down for me after this though, and I was able to enjoy the book more. I felt so invested in Cleo, but she was the only character I cared about really. I wished the pov had stayed between her and Frank, without diverting away to things I wasn't interested in. ( )

this reminded me of sally rooney’s writing so much, and i loved it for that, i was invested from cleo and frank’s first conversation and did not want this to end. ( )

Oh wow!
What a debut!
I couldn’t put this book down yet I didn’t want it to end.
Every bit of Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a best bit.
A twenty-something, beautiful and broken artist. A forty-something, half Jewish and alcoholic advertising ace. A closet transvestite with Polish roots and a drug habit. A drop dead gorgeous, permanently broke party girl and actress. A self-obsessed and highly competitive, Scandinavian sex god. Cleo Frank, Quentin, Zoe and Anders got right into my head and right under my skin from the get go.
I’ve never been to The Big Apple yet I felt like a native New Yorker flitting from hotdog street vendor to late-night deli, from Grand Central Oyster Bar to Chinatown, from Little Italy to the suburbs of New Jersey.
I had a special soft spot for super sassy, sweetheart Eleanor Louise Rosenthal - “a Jewish man in drag”. Every line’s a winner in her first person narrative covering two chapters of the book.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a little bit of everything.
A love story and a story about love, needing to be loved, lost love, tainted love. Laugh out loud funny and heartbreakingly sad. Graphically shocking and thought-provokingly tragic. Tongue-in-cheek and painfully honest.
It swings from desperation, alienation and depression to happiness, acceptance and hope.
It’s one of a kind! ( )

I wasn’t aware that Cleopatra and Frankenstein had been compared to Sally Rooney novels, otherwise I might not have picked this up. But to me, it’s so much better. Yes, there are intense feelings and yes, there are young people doing dramatic stuff for random reasons but it just worked for me so much better. The plot is rather loose and the characters all have something unlikeable about them but it worked.

Cleo is an English artist in New York when she meets Frank, owner of his own ad agency and twenty years older. They hit it off immediately, falling in love and doing wild, crazy things together before getting married. But they bring along their own emotional baggage and their friends and family, who are as equally fascinating. After meeting both of them, the reader is introduced to those around them. There’s Quentin, Cleo’s rich friend who likes dressing in drag and Zoe, the aspiring actress and half-sister of Frank. Cleo’s father and stepmother make an incredibly awkward appearance and Frank’s friend Anders who has been with most of the women in New York. As the shine wears off Frank and Cleo’s relationship, things become much more caustic between them. They don’t hold back when it comes to hurting each other and all the quirky pretentious things they did just start to grate.

There’s not a great deal of plot in this book – it’s simply the story of falling in and out of love surrounded by a myriad of characters that you hate to love, or love to hate. They fit the cliches – gay best friend, rebellious sibling and plain Jane with a heart of gold. But somehow, it just works. It’s a fascinating read for what these odd characters will do and say next, whether it be a sugar glider for a pet or destroying an ice sculpture and having it mistaken for performance art. The characters and their feelings/actions are what make it hard to tear your eyes away from the story. The characters are very flawed and can be very unlikeable at times. They’re mixed up and falling apart, but they are trying to redeem themselves…slowly.

The language is a bit flowery at times but to me, it fitted the story of the over the top love affair where the couple are the only ones to discover anything, ever. I really think most of the characters would speak and think like that, which is a hallmark of their detailed creation. Each character really could have had their own book, especially Eleanor, who is the most hilarious and down to earth. This might be classed as literary fiction, but it’s an easy midweek read.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )