If there’s one cultural phenomenon out of Covid, it’s the Sad Girl Novel. Seriously, it’s the 2020s’ Cabbage Patch Kids or Pet Rocks or Tamagotchis—for a brief blip, we couldn’t get enough of books about Girls Who Are Sad.
Maybe it’s not that new (I’m a white girl from New Jersey, do you really think I’m gonna sit here and insist I didn’t have a Sylvia Plath phase?), but the sad girl novels of late are moving copies, and it doesn’t hurt that the genre is so flexible. I’ve seen a wide range of books labelled as “sad girl fiction”, from romance books with maybe a smattering of mental health representation, metatextual meditations like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, emotion-heavy doorstoppers like A Little Life, and even nonfiction like Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, about her experience as the plaintiff in the Brock Turner rape case. Sad girl books feature girls who are sad in a very particular way: mostly white, mostly middle to upper class, with floaty, soft-focus, Sofia-Coppola-style depression. They’re never too manic or too sloppy, mostly Sad but Still Hot, and their books, most importantly, have very photogenic covers. Bonus points if it’s pink.
This is how books get sold in the age of Bookstagram, and I’m perfectly guilty of it. But with Cleopatra and Frankenstein, the debut from Coco Mellors that is the ultimate buzzy sad girl novel of the moment, the cover might be all that’s notable about it. This is a book meant to be an accessory, and it’s indicative of all the problems of Sad Girl Fiction and maybe the entirety of bookselling right now.
It focuses on Cleo, a young English artist adrift in New York, and Frank, a functioning alcoholic working in advertising, who jump into an impulsive, poorly thought-out marriage. What is really not much more than a short-story premise turns into a very sprawling novel, exploring the experiences of Cleo and Frank’s friends and how they are all affected by the marriage. What results is a bit of a collection of vignettes about a series of characters that are written like sitcom characters—making this feel like a Bizarro version of Gavin & Stacey.
Normally I really enjoy unlikeable characters, but I have limited tolerance for poorly-written unlikeable characters. Frank’s entire arc writes itself—alcoholic with daddy issues—and Cleo is a character that feels like the past decade of Discourse About Manic Pixie Dreamgirls didn’t happen. And all the characters around them, mostly art-world types with drug problems, are one-note and occupy a New York City that feels woefully stuck in the past, in the way Sex and the City feels cringey and out-of-touch now. The one interesting character, Zoe, is Frank’s half-sister and an NYU student uncomfortable with his marriage to a woman significantly younger than him, but she’s barely featured.
And dear God is the sad stuff sad. This is a book that throws pretty much everything at you: substance abuse, depression, suicidal ideation and attempts, physical abuse, animal cruelty (if you’ve read this, are you as haunted by That Scene as I am?) … I was exhausted. In lots of ‘sad girl’ books, the drama serves a purpose and a function—the family abuse in Normal People, the drug use in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the religious repression in The Virgin Suicides, it all does something in the scope of the plot. In Cleopatra and Frankenstein, the plot is secondary. The plot is the sadness. The couple (obviously) are broken up by the end, but I had spent nearly 400 pages with these characters and felt there was no purpose to their story. Had I just been scammed? Is this a sad girl fiction pyramid scheme? Or is this a book that exists more for its Instagrammable cover and not for any real release or catharsis?
Maybe sad girl fiction warps our brains into being sadder, the way I felt my nonstop true-crime podcast habit was deluding me into thinking every person who walked past me was a potential murderer. It can be validating to experience a mental health issue and read a book about a character who’s also mentally unwell, in the way true crime podcasts and documentaries feel validating: the world really can be that scary, and it sometimes feels nice to have that affirmed rather than be treated as hysterical.
But with Cleopatra and Frankenstein, I didn’t feel validated. I didn’t feel much of anything at all. This is a book to be seen reading, and it makes me feel the Sad Girl book bubble is about to burst—and maybe it’s an industry that needs a crash.
Bookshop.org is a great, easy way to buy your books--each purchase supports indie bookstores across the UK. If you're gift shopping, why not consider a Bookshop.org e-gift card?
And no matter where you are in the world, Blackwell's is a great independent option with international shipping and competitive prices.