Coco Mellors knows about the slow burn. While living in New York and working as a copywriter, the author spent years crafting her debut novel and submitting the manuscript to publishers, only to get turned down by every single one. She put the book through a rewrite and eventually sold Cleopatra and Frankenstein, about the gradual implosion of an impulsive marriage, to Bloomsbury (in the US) and HarperCollins (in the UK). “There’s so much pressure about pub week in this business, but it took a year for the book to become a bestseller in the UK and two years in the states,” says Mellors. “But to me, that’s a book having a really long tail in a really lovely way.”
Cleopatra became an It-book for It-girls, with its aesthetic cover seen everywhere from Instagram to an episode of And Just Like That. While her debut novel was blowing up, Mellors got to work on her follow-up, a story about estranged sisters who struggle to contain the worst sides of themselves during the aftermath of a family tragedy. When Blue Sisters published across the pond this summer, it became an instant bestseller, and it’s on track to do the same here in the states (it hit shelves September 3). It’s a full circle moment for the author, who says that while the success feels good, she’s focused on the long term. “A book really is for a lifetime, and I’d love to write books that people read long after I’m dead,” she says. “I love the idea that I could have readers who aren’t even born yet.”
Here, Mellors speaks to THR from her Brooklyn home about gaining notoriety as a sober writer, navigating the Hollywood landscape as Cleopatra winds its way through the adaptation process, and that big And Just Like That moment.
Since Blue Sisters has been out in the UK for a few months, you’ve been doing these very large events on your book tours — what have you learned about your readers from all the face-to-face interactions?
It’s a lot of women in their twenties and early thirties — it’s funny, so that I have a kid I understand that for those in that group who have children, how hard it is to go to a reading at 7:00 p.m. on a Thursday. I write about things that are difficult to talk about. Addiction, what it feels like to be related to people who are addicts, and in Blue Sisters, chronic pain and endometriosis. The reader first experiences those things in the privacy of the book, and then they see me talk about it and see that I’m not ashamed or afraid. That allows them to share when they come talk to me in the signing line. People share vulnerable things with me, or sometimes just say thank you for giving me a space where I can feel this stuff. I cry pretty much every time I have an event, because I’m so moved by getting to connect with other people in that way.
Does it feel scarier to be releasing another vulnerable book now that you’re more well-known than you were during your debut?
I think with Blue Sisters I actually feel more protected by how clearly fictional the story is. With Cleopatra, there were obvious parallels between myself and Cleo — and I also played with those. I lived to regret that, in a way, because I’m very much not her. In the new book, there is no parallel to me, no one reads those sisters and thinks oh Coco is Lucky or Coco is Bonnie. It’s nice to know that this will be talked about as fiction.
Can you talk about your decision to make yourself more of a public person?
I made a choice at the beginning of my career that I would be open about being sober. I’m very open in my own life about being sober. My local deli person probably knows I’m sober. I come from a family in which the vast majority of us are now sober, so I couldn’t really imagine having a career in which I’ve written about addiction — and not even necessarily by choice — and then not owning the fact that it’s something I’ve experienced. I’m proud to be a sober person and I would’ve really liked to have had more sober writers to look up to when I was young.
When we were young, I think the idea of the hard-drinking writer or creative was glamorized to us…
Yes, it was seen as almost what helps them write. I recently went back and reread Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, and he really was someone who could drink and write somehow. Of course it didn’t work out for him in the end. But he wrote about F. Scott Fitzgerald and how desperate he was to write, and how his relationships and drinking kept getting in the way. And I remember feeling that way when I was young, like I had potential and that there was something there, but I just couldn’t do it with the lifestyle I had. I was hungover multiple days a week. Obviously Fitzgerald managed incredible work through his struggles, but I think about what would he have done if he had been able to be sober?
The names of your characters have so far been very integral to the work and their branding, if you’ll allow me to frame it that way. How intentional are you?
Martin Amos was my teacher used to talk a lot about the power of the name. With the Blue sisters, I liked that they all had the -E sound at the end, that there was a feeling of sisterhood in even in the way their names sound. It’s a fun process — I have a son now, and I was originally worried about using names I would want for a child for my book. I have a couple names in my new book that I really would have loved, but now they’re associated with the book I would never be able to use them for a baby.
When you started the process of selling the film and television rights to Cleopatra and Frankenstein, did you know you wanted to be involved with the adaptation? Or did that come later?
I knew I wanted to be involved. It was my first book, but it was also very dialogue-heavy and I felt that I could preserve the voices of the book. I love the idea of having a writer’s room, and I’m excited about the collaborative element, but I wasn’t ready to be like, okay take it away. It’s my first baby. I really admire what Taffy [Brodesser-Akner] did with Fleishman Is In Trouble, I thought it was just a great consistency of voice between the book and the show.
It’s funny, because the book had a much easier time during the submission process for film and TV than it did trying to get published as a book. I remember feeling like, wow, Hollywood people seem to really like this. They were more open to it than traditional publishing, maybe because it’s quite a glamorous wold and it’s very character-driven.
Warner Bros. TV holds the rights, but what’s the current status on the project?
I’m adapting it, and I hope we sell it. I have an amazing co-writer, and it’s been a really fun process. I don’t ever want to write a sequel to the book but I love the idea of the characters evolving on the screen, and of the storylines evolving through multiple seasons. I think the end of the book is also a beginning — it’s two people coming to a realization that may or may not stick. You don’t know.
The book has already made it to screen, in a way, since it was featured in an episode of And Just Like That…
I’ve always said that Sex and the City is how I learned to write dialogue. I am, on some level, always watching that show. When I can’t sleep I close my eyes and can watch episodes in my head because I’ve seen it so many times. So to have my book be on this new version of the show, and to be held in the hands of Carrie, was beyond my wildest dreams. I’d been told that their prop stylist had asked for a copy of the book, and even just to have a book that was even part of the cultural consciousness enough for that was incredible. But then when I saw the episode and she’s got the book in bed, I was like, who needs a Pulitzer when you have this?
