This week on Pagecast, the podcast from Jonathan Ball Publishers, Tecla Ciolfi, the founder of Texx and the City, chats to Coco Mellors, author of the captivating new novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein!

Pagecast offers you insider interviews with recently published authors, looking into the process of writing, exploring the narratives within and providing you with the story behind the story.

Mellors was raised in London and New York City. She completed her MFA in Fiction at New York University, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. Cleopatra and Frankenstein has been translated into more than 10 languages and is being developed for television. She lives in Los Angeles, California, in the United States, with her husband.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple’s impulsive marriage.

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About the book

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.

 

Categories Fiction International

Tags Cleopatra and Frankenstein Coco Mellors Jonathan Ball Publishers Pagecast Podcasts Tecla Ciolfi