Writing a Love Letter to New York(ers) : A Guest Post by Coco Mellors
Glittering. Grimy. Sympathetic. Selfish. The characters in my first novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein have been called many things. Some have been loved, some detested, some deeply related to, others vehemently rejected. Every reaction is valid (in fact, delightful!) to me, because each one answers the main question I was concerned with while writing this story: do these characters feel real?
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Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Cleopatra and Frankenstein
By Coco Mellors
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Paperback
$16.99
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Coco Mellors gives us a glittering, funny and relatable debut about being young (and not so young) and trying to make sense of it all in New York City. Centering on an unlikely marriage and the people caught in its orbit, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a romp through the underbelly of the Downtown Manhattan elite.
Coco Mellors gives us a glittering, funny and relatable debut about being young (and not so young) and trying to make sense of it all in New York City. Centering on an unlikely marriage and the people caught in its orbit, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a romp through the underbelly of the Downtown Manhattan elite.
Set in New York City in the early 2000s, Cleopatra and Frankenstein centers around a high-flying cast of characters at the intersection of art, advertising, fashion and film who embody life in the city at its most desirable and damaging. I like to say this novel is about the world of the night out and the morning after. It’s the fantasy of life in New York and the fall of that fantasy.
So why did I write this version of the city? Because this is the New York I know best. It’s the place that I most love—or at least learned to love after really hating.
When I was fifteen, I moved from London to New York with my family. I lived on the Upper East Side and attended an international high school on the Upper West Side. That first year, I just didn’t fit it. I liked thrift store finds and indie bands, while the other kids at my high school were more into Ralph Lauren and Hamptons parties. (I’ll never forget one student turning to me after hearing I worked at a vintage store on my weekends and asking with disgust, “But aren’t you afraid you’ll smell?”)
I had no friends, but I didn’t want my parents to know, so I started heading downtown on my weekends to venues like the Knitting Factory and 169 Bar in Chinatown, places that at the time did not card (I promise this has since changed).
Because I didn’t know how else to talk to people, I would bring a notebook and pen and pretend to be a music journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, interviewing the bands, bartender, bouncer, coat check girl…Basically, anyone who would talk to me. In this way, I started collecting stories of New York’s night owls and, more importantly, eventually made some friends. I kept this habit up for the next ten years when, at twenty-five, I was accepted into NYU’s MFA program and started writing Cleopatra and Frankenstein.
Those first years in New York, so steeped in loneliness, yet saved by hearing the stories of others, changed the trajectory of my life and of my novel’s. They clarified for me why I wanted to write and what message I wanted to share with the world:
I wanted to write a story that would give others who had felt as lonely and lost as me hope. That showed people were capable of great and profound change. I wanted, (as Frank says in his wedding vows to Cleo) to show that when the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.