Like a psychopath”-but too often it reads like caricature. Some of it lands-one of Cleo’s friends dismisses a man for having “shoe trees in all his shoes, even the sneakers. Mellors leavens this marital Sturm und Drang with a satirical portrait of present-day New York life. Soon, resentment, carelessness, infidelity, and unresolved issues from their childhoods come between them (Frank’s mother was an emotionally distant alcoholic and Cleo’s died by suicide), but their intoxicating chemistry keeps them together. Frank, a successful ad executive with a worsening drinking problem, meets Cleo, an aspiring British painter 20 years his junior, on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan, and they begin an affair. In this involving if strained debut, Mellors dissects the tumultuous relationship between two magnetic and damaged people.
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