Unlucky Mel

by Aggeliki Pelekidis

In Unlucky Mel, PhD candidate Melody Hollings is in the final year of her creative writing program in upstate New York. Her dream life of landing the perfect academic job somewhere far away from her small hometown and publishing her first novel is so close to coming true. But first she has to finish writing that book. Oh, and graduate. To do both, she needs her good friend Ben to reciprocate all the help she's given him over the years on his writing.

But when Mel's widowed father starts acting strangely, she is thrown. Chalking it up to a dramatic attempt to manipulate her into moving back in with him, she discovers that he really is suffering from dementia. Now, she'll need to stay local to care for him. Her dream is dying and her best option is to win a post-graduation fellowship through her alma mater.

Even with all the upheaval in her life, rather than helping, Ben turns on Mel in a shocking betrayal. For the first time in her life, Mel has a nemesis! The stress of caring for her father, teaching too many students, and living with so much uncertainty over her future escalates Mel's desire for retribution—until one night, she discovers an opportunity to ruin Ben's reputation.

Unlucky Mel is a smart, funny debut in which Pelekidis explores the lengths we're willing to go to in order to even the score and the ways in which women are often expected to sacrifice their professional ambitions for the men in their lives.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Humor

272 pages, Hardcover

Published September 15, 2024

About the author

Aggeliki Pelekidis was born in Brooklyn and lived there most of her life but also moved around quite a bit thanks to her Greek parents. She worked in public relations in NYC for over a decade, including being the Manager of Communications for the New York Aquarium and the Director of Public Affairs for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. She earned an MA and Ph.D in English with a creative writing emphasis from Binghamton University. Her collection of short stories, Patrimonium, won BU's Distinguished Dissertation Award in Creative Writing. Ann Beattie selected a story of hers as the first-prize winner of a New Ohio Review’s fiction contest. Her writing has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Confrontation, and many other literary journals. Her debut novel, Unlucky Mel, was published in 2024 by Cornell University Press’s Three Hills Imprint. She’s the Associate Director of First-Year Writing at BU and spends her free time gardening, reading, cooking, and taking care of her cats, dogs, horses, and chickens.

Reviews

[Ojo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review at https://littafi.com/book-reviews/genr...

[Susan Ruocco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED IT! Unlucky Mel hits home for me because it is about taking care of an aging parent while struggling to manage your own challenges in life. It just doesn’t get any more real than that! Although Mel is a writer- what she goes through is relatable to most women I know in any career. Family, career, relationships - I loved rooting for Mel along the way - through the sexism and frustrations of life’s bumps in the road. I loved laughing out loud with bad choices she makes, situations she finds herself in and how she finds herself in the end. Can’t wait to read the next one!

[Kate Navickas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this--it's engrossing, a fast read, and witty! Having gone through graduate school, Mel's struggles with finishing her dissertation, working with faculty and selfish peers, and ongoing labor issues are relatable and less satirical than they should be. Mel navigates a variety of challenging relationships, including her relationship with herself, with humor--and eventually she evolves into a version of herself she's proud of. Definitely a good read for anyone trying to find or honor themselves through grad school and/or writing!

[Aida Zilelian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a fun and in-depth read! A beautiful balance between the main character's inner turmoil of caring for her ailing father and facing the challenges of succeeding in academia from a female perspective. Mel is funny, honest and ultimately a character who will never disappoint as she leaps over life's hurdles, all in the name of self-preservation. Pelekidis' debut novel presents a well-paced plot and in-depth characters, revealing a realistic portrait of a young woman grappling with difficult male characters and the self-doubt of being a writer in all its challenges.

[Holly M Wendt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aggeliki Pelekidis's Unlucky Mel is a novel that skillfully traverses different territories, much like Pelekidis's dogged protagonist Mel. While Mel juggles her roles as writer, educator, graduate student, romantic partner, and, with increasing urgency and intensity, parental caretaker, Pelekidis's confident prose carries the reader through a range of emotional registers.

Mel's experiences navigating the labyrinth of academe ring absurdly and anxiously true. This is where the complexity of the humor here is so brilliantly handled: it is often ridiculous and yet the white-knuckling weight of the future, the structural inequities, the jealousies, the betrayals, and the universe's general indifference to the individual writer's plight are nevertheless real. That experience is rendered so well in this novel, and it's given additional depth, context, and consequence in light of Mel's father's cognitive decline and her own responses to it. Again, Pelekidis carves expertly with the blade that divides the comic and the devastating. The effect is this human, humane, and hilarious novel.

[Lmm]

This book was a great read. Melody Hollings is funny, engaging and absolutely maddening at times. There were moments when I wanted to shake her and pull her away from her worst instincts, and I breathed a sigh of relief when she finally saved herself. I empathized with the struggle to recognize and deal with a parent’s dementia while also trying to survive and thrive in academia. I also loved the way Melody’s creative mind turned many experiences into a story or vivid image: the porch and railings of her father’s home remind her of a” barnacle-encrusted whale”; her fantasy about teaching at Harvard includes her exhaling “fragrant pipe smoke”, and a walk across a campus under construction feels like “Fred Flintstone’s Slate Rock and Gravel Company.”

[Mel Sharif · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much to love about Unlucky Mel. Melody Hollings is as much a lovable character as she is human, in that way we all have to admit to ourselves in rare moments. She’s also incredibly imaginative and (there’s no better use of this adjective) quirky. I laughed out loud multiple times while reading this, while also finding myself sitting with the resonant descriptions of Mel’s interpersonal struggles. I really appreciated the novel’s social commentary and centering of women’s experiences in the early 2000s. I rooted for Mel despite and because of her mistakes the whole way through. Great read!

[Susan Hladky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mel puts a spotlight on academia's historical methods and traditions - not always female-friendly. The story focused on dealing with a parent with dementia and taking care of yourself at the same time. Great ending!

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlucky Mel is a kunstlerroman, or portrait of the artist as a (not so) young woman, who comes to know herself in an awkward and sometimes painful setting: graduate school. It's also a campus satire novel, and it is as funny as all-get-out. Then again it's an exploration of loving and often complex relationships: between friends, colleagues, and nemeses; between a daughter and a father; between lovers; between students and teachers. It's satisfying to see Mel's moral vision deepen in a way that isn't preachy, but maybe even more fun to watch--and cringe at--her detours along the way.

[Delaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check out my blog for the full review.

Content warnings: dead dog, death of a parent (off-page, past), parent with dementia

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Melody Hollings is a PhD creative writing student, set to graduate in the Spring. That is, if she can get her book edited in time and manage to pull together a thesis committee after her advisor abruptly left at the end of last school year. And that is not to mention the stress of finding a job after graduation, and that it might need to be close to home so that she can take care of her aging father.

She has been relying on peer and friend Ben to give feedback on her manuscript, the same way she always gave him valuable feedback on his work. But now he is seemingly to occupied with his own work to give her the time of day. More and more, Mel realizes that she has spent years working herself ragged to take care of the men in her life, without getting anything in return. And there is a tiny (okay, big) part of her that would like to take her anger out by getting revenge on Ben.

While I found it relatable (as a current PhD student), a lot of the everyday minutia of being a graduate student is probably not going to entice a lot of audiences. There is a lot about the world of academia which is left unexplained, which I think would be confusing to someone who is not familiar with that world. Of course, this was published by a University imprint, so their target audience is going to be people in academia.

Something I did really like was watching Mel go on a bit of a feminist journey. About halfway through the book, she begins realizing how much she has let the men around her dictate her life. And by the end of the book, she had noticeably made progress in connecting with the women around her, who she had previously been brushing off. This is true in her professional life as well. She realizes that she had been trained on books exclusively written by white men, and vows to populate her own syllabi with more diverse authors. Perhaps it seems like a basic step, but it really is a problem in academia, and she is only at the start of her journey.

While the novel had a bit of a slow start, it hooked me in the second half as Mel began to really evolve as a character. If you are someone who enjoys reading books set in academia, then I definitely think Unlucky Mel should pique your interest.

[Mehreen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not care for this book. Mel came off as annoying, weak and whiny. So her friend didn't read her manuscript, you're a grad student! Edit it yourself and submit your thesis or find more reliable friends! The insane need to get revenge because someone isn't a fan of your writing felt so juvenile. Her inability to stand up to her hoarder father and giving up on her younger boyfriend because she felt trapped into staying all felt like a cop out. I liked her other friends and there were a few jovial moments, but the cruelty of letting a dog freeze in the snow and then trying to frame your "nemesis" for it made me roll my eyes. As I write this review I had to actually lower it to two stars as I find little redeeming in this whole book. Would not recommend.

[R. Renee Branca · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who was in the "VU" English department as a grad student in 2006-2007, and thus a colleague of "Mel," I completely re-lived the experience of precarious employment, aging parents, back-stabbing rivals, dysfunctional departments, dissertation directors who vanish, reconstructing a committee at the eleventh hour, and the general sleeplessness, depression, and questioning of one's life choices your heroine undergoes. I only wish I could have done so with the same resilience and sense of humor she has. I'm so glad this novel was written!

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mel is a graduate student who has a lot of things going wrong with her life. Her father has early dementia and has become a hoarder. She believes her friend Ben will help her with her book by reviewing it and giving her advice on how to improve it. This is what she did for him. However, it turns out Ben really isn’t her friend.

I unfortunately didn’t really care for any part of the book except the epilogue. Mel spent a good portion of the story trying to get revenge on Ben for not really being as good a friend as she was to him. I’m glad things worked out for her in the end,

[Ethel Rohan · Rating 5 out of 5]

UNLUCKY MEL proved to be a timely read that offered welcome wit, pathos, and escapism during difficult times. So much is relatable in the personal and in academia here, and in the many unique yet universal struggles at play. Mel's role as caregiver is at the core of this story, as is women's subversion of the self and of each other in a patriarchal world order. I rooted for Mel throughout, and cheered on her breakthroughs.

[Jeffrey T · Rating 5 out of 5]

So damn funny but with a lot of heart. You can really feel for Mel and what she goes throw. She’s a flawed but great character.

[Melanie Bechard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mel is a loveable weirdo. I would have given 4 stars if she was 20% less cringey though.

[Michelle Weeks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished Aggeliki Pelekidis’ book last night! I am blown away!!! I am not, by far, any sort of book critic but - I laughed, I got anxious, I related to Mel’s trials and tribulations both professionally and personally and even cried a little because it truly stirred up those personal emotions!! The humor is cleverly interspersed and without giving too much away….the revenge plots are hysterical!! I loved the references to local spots too!! Angie does an amazing job of unflinchingly narrating the down to earth realities and human reactions that we all face in our everyday lives. It’s been a long time since I read a book start to finish in one sitting! I highly recommend!