In the blink of an eye, we have entered the 2nd half of the year. I should really go some place where there is no network. With internet connection, whatever comes to mind, whatever information you want to find out or know is a click away. Before you know it, you drift away from why you first google about a certain topic. I should stay off my devices and the internet, so I can engage with reading more physical books and hopefully more productive in pursuing my writing endeavours.
A good romantic comedy is always a pick-me-up when you want to unwind and not worry about whatever that is bothering you. A romantic comedy is about finding true love and the film ends when two people get together after overcoming some misunderstanding or obstacles. We certainly want to believe in the happily ever after.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors is a meet-cute story about two characters who has a whirlwind romance that ends up with a short marriage. It is not a happily ever after story.
Cleo and Frank meets on New Year’s eve at a friend’s elevator in the city of New York. It is love at first sight. Frank, forty-five years old is enchanted by twenty-five-year- old beautiful Cleo who has blond hair. ‘Like most people, he noticed her hair first. It hung over her shoulder in two golden curtains, sweeping open to reveal that much anticipated first act: her face.’ Frank runs a successful advertising agency while Cleo is British and an aspiring artist who freelances as a textile designer. After graduating from Central Saint Martins she completes a MFA in New York, and her student visa is expiring at the beginning of summer. In June, they are married at City Hall. Santiago who is a celebrated Peruvian chef holds the wedding party at his home for Cleo and Frank. It is his elevator where they had first met.
‘What’s a wedding, Cleo wondered, if not a private dream made public, a fantasy suspended between two words like a cat’s cradle? But Cleo had never dreamed about getting married. What she fantasized about was her first solo show as an artist, a day dedicated solely to her. What scared her was that recently it was easier to imagine the opening than the actual paintings.She worried that she was one of those artists who care more about being an artist than they do about making art. It was a fear so base, so desperately ordinary, that she never mentioned it to anyone, not even Frank.’
Frank’s wedding vow is “When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.” As the story progresses you find them moving closer to their dark sides. The initial connection that they feel dissipates and they soon find that they cannot empathize with each other’s feelings . While they try desperately to belong to each other, they are unable to meet each other’s emotional needs. Three months into their marriage, their next-door neighbour leaves a note complaining about their “late-night soap opera histrionics“. “The note was a new kind of humiliation.”
Enter Eleanor, a writer who has joined Frank’s ad agency as a copywriter on a three-month contract with the option to extend. She is thirty-seven and resides with her mother in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, caring for her father who is suffering from dementia and Parkinson’s disease. She was working in LA on a show about a clairvoyant cat and due to creative differences she was “invited to leave.” Now that she is home she spends her evenings writing Human Garbage, a comedy.
In Eleanor’s narratives:
‘They call this ” temp to perm.” I love this phrase. Not only is it palindrome adjacent, it is extremely useful. All situations in life fall into one of these two categories. For example, the fact you are thirty-seven years old and currently live with your mother in New Jersey. But the shape of your chin is, sadly, perm.’
Frank and Eleanor work closely and they share similar sense of humour. Cleo comes across their email exchange and suspects that they have feelings for each other.
To appease Cleo and in an attempt to better their relationship, Frank gifts Cleo a sugar glider so for a while, they have a shared joy in caring for the small creature. Frank is an excessive drinker and in his drunken stupor, he accidentally flushes their pet down the toilet. Cleo is upset about Frank’s drinking and he does not respond kindly to her suggestion that he should drink less. Communication between them reaches an impasse.
As the story unfolds, there are other characters such as Zoe, Frank’s half sister who is dependent on her brother for financial assistance, Cleo’s friend ,Quentin who is queer and troubled. Aside from Santiago, the chef, there is also tall and handsome Anders, Frank’s best friend ‘for whom life’s difficulties slipped away like a silk dress sliding off a hanger‘.
Zoe is an aspiring actress and when she is in dire straits, she signs herself up on the Sugar Babies website and there she meets thirty-eight year old Jiro Tanaka, who only seeks her companionship to hang out as his wife is too occupied with their son. He grows up outside Japan and upon returning to Japan for business school, he finds himself ‘no longer Japanese enough’.
This is how Jiro defines loneliness:
‘the taste of loneliness is a glass of chardonnay and a turkey club sandwich at an airport. The shape of loneliness is his son’s single bed, which he uses on the rare nights he’s home, while his son sleeps in the master bedroom beside his wife.….’
He tells Zoe that the key to a happy life is ” No expectations. No preferences. If you prefer one outcome over another in life, you will likely be disappointed. I prefer nothing and am always surprised.”
During their short marriage, Frank and Cleo have to battle their demons and work through what is really the matter with them. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a character driven story. The characters are flawed and indulgent. The story is about how they struggle to find connections and balance between their ambitions and life. Coco Mellors‘s prose is beautiful and it is peppered with humour and told from multiple perspectives. I’m glad that I have read the debut by Mellors.
For those who are in a relationship or a marriage, we know how things can become for better or for worse. Years down the road, things can go off the rail and a couple can become uncouple.
In any kind of close relationship, apart from sharing similar values, there must be mutual trust, tolerance and understanding. I do think that if two people are good for each other they tend to bring out the best in one another so both can become the best versions of themselves. Though every individual should be responsible for his or her own growth, certain relationships somehow bring out the worst in you. Hence we want to caution ourselves against people whom we find toxic for our wellbeing. But then again to quote Carl Jung, ‘We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.’ Could it be that we avoid certain people or situations so as not to be repeatedly tested and have to deal with our dark sides or unresolved issues ? Life is certainly simpler with no expectations and no preferences. Come what may, we just do our best.
Bookaholic Macchiato 