The Dark Side of Bohemian Life in NYC

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Coco Mellors’ Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an ambitious debut that attempts to paint an intimate, raw picture of love, identity, and the exhilarating chaos of life in New York City. The novel centres around Cleo, a British artist adrift in her mid-twenties, and Frank, an older, successful advertising executive, whose impulsive marriage promises transformation but instead leads them into a tumultuous whirlwind of addiction, co-dependency, and self-discovery. While Mellors writes beautifully, with moments of poetic clarity that bring the characters’ emotions to life, the novel stumbles in its romanticization of struggle, inadvertently echoing narratives of glamorized hardship that date back to Sex and the City.

Stylistically, Mellors is undeniably talented. Her prose has a lyrical, almost cinematic quality that gives the reader a vivid sense of New York’s allure. She captures the electric atmosphere of a city that can feel like both a playground and a battleground, where people are often forced to reinvent themselves, sometimes desperately. Cleo and Frank’s relationship is flawed, messy, and full of contradictions, and Mellors navigates their complexities with subtlety. There are poignant explorations of mental health and identity, showing Mellors’ insight into the nuances of human behaviour and vulnerability.

However, Cleopatra and Frankenstein at times feels less like a story about real struggle and more like a glossy portrayal of bohemian hardships as part of the “New York experience.” Mellors touches on issues like poverty, addiction, and mental illness but often veers toward a stylized aesthetic that unintentionally downplays their gravity. Cleo’s experiences as a struggling artist and her often precarious financial situation are presented in a way that might resonate as “relatable” to some readers, yet there is an underlying current of privilege—she has the freedom to flounder, make mistakes, and experiment with life, often without severe consequences. This privilege echoes Sex and the City, where characters live fabulously chaotic lives without ever fully facing the repercussions of their actions. In both cases, New York is painted as a place that validates and sustains artistic angst, making even poverty feel like an integral, almost charming piece of the city’s artistic tapestry.

However, Cleopatra and Frankenstein brings with it a danger that many narratives of the bohemian lifestyle face: the potential to inadvertently romanticize a version of hardship that does not acknowledge the full spectrum of lived experiences, particularly for people of colour or those with physical disabilities. In Mellors’ world, poverty and struggle are often aestheticized, an extension of the characters’ creative identities rather than genuine limitations on their lives and choices. By centring her narrative on white, able-bodied protagonists who can slip in and out of these hardships with relative ease, Mellors misses an opportunity to address the reality that for marginalized individuals, economic and social challenges are far more profound and enduring. Poverty for these groups is not just a season of self-discovery, as it often is in bohemian narratives, but a pervasive and systemic barrier that intersects with race, ability, and other aspects of identity.

The book’s lack of intersectional depth reveals a skewed perspective, one that implies that adversity is simply a natural part of creative exploration. In truth, for many marginalized people, financial or physical hardship is often a complex and isolating experience, compounded by structural inequities that the book fails to explore. The consequence of omitting these perspectives is a glamourised view of urban struggle, one that can feel tone-deaf and exclusive. It suggests that the appeal of New York City’s “struggling artist” life is universal, which overlooks how people outside of Cleo and Frank’s social sphere often face the same challenges without a safety net, or a way out. This narrative choice reduces the gravity of real adversity and limits the novel’s relevance to a broader, more diverse audience who may seek reflections of their own struggles within its pages.

The comparison with Sex and the City is apt, as Mellors’ characters similarly revel in self-indulgent, at times selfish choices, with a limited degree of accountability. Cleo and her friends experience crises and confront their own failings, yet the resolutions feel incomplete, sometimes overshadowed by the allure of the lifestyle they are living. Much like Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, Cleo’s circle represents a slice of New York that’s artistically rich and emotionally complex but often lacks a grounding sense of self-reflection and responsibility. Their hardship is less about genuine deprivation and more about the dramatics of living in a high-stakes, creatively charged environment—a nuanced form of suffering that can, at times, feel contrived.

For all its attempts at depth, Cleopatra and Frankenstein struggles to fully capture the stakes of its darker themes. While Cleo and Frank’s relationship touches on the pain of addiction and mental illness, these issues are not thoroughly examined beyond how they affect Cleo’s own artistic and personal journey. This selective engagement with difficult topics makes the novel feel somewhat superficial, glossing over realities that many who actually struggle with poverty and mental health face. Mellors successfully brings readers into Cleo’s world, yet she fails to explore the full weight of what a genuinely precarious lifestyle in New York City entails. At times, it feels as if poverty is merely another phase in Cleo’s journey rather than a real threat to her stability and future.

In the end, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a well-written, engaging read that captures the captivating magnetism of New York City and the creative souls it draws. However, its tendency to romanticize struggle—while rooted in privilege—undermines its more serious themes. The novel’s characters, though complex and compelling, come off as another iteration of New York’s artist archetypes: creative, deeply flawed, but ultimately unaccountable. Mellors has talent and offers a fresh voice, yet her debut novel lands more as an aesthetically pleasing take on hardship than a profound meditation on it.

Featured Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash.