Then she spotted the divorce papers taped to them. When Manhattanite Galloway accepted delivery of a dozen red roses from her husband one morning, she was thrilled. Try not to mind mantras of “self-care” and tending your inner child and turn instead to essays by Mia Levitin and Rosie Wilby. Yes, there are tears – heck, there are Fleetwood Mac lyrics – but you’ll also find calls to broaden the definition of romance, to quit thinking of single life as mere prologue and to wonder whether the reason we’re taught to fear going solo might perhaps be that it makes us so very powerful. Sadly, the personal essay is not the established literary genre here that it is in the US, but while this patchy collection doesn’t exactly exceed expectations, it does nevertheless gesture to the potential richness of the female experience of being unattached. In terms of depth, this novel is more Jay McInerney than Hanya Yanagihara, but Mellors proves herself a poetic chronicler of inky gloom as well as twinkly surfaces. They wed on a whim to calamitous effect on both sides.

It’s an urban playground that struggling painter Cleo, 24 years old and stylishly British, is on the brink of being exiled from, her student visa due to expire in mere months, when she meets Frank, a fortysomething ad agency owner with a nice line in elevator chitchat. New York City at the start of the 21st-century – pre-financial crisis, pre-Trump, pre-Covid – is captured with near-devotional lushness in this nostalgic debut.

Cleopatra and frankenstein coco mellors