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A Novel
by Rufi Thorpe
Book Reviewed by:A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman's attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.
As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she'd have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can't imagine how she'll ever make a living. She's still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn't brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone's advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she'll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx's advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she's turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo's problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?
Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo's Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who's struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It's a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.
Chapter One
You are about to begin reading a new book, and to be honest, you are a little tense. The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people's names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly know. And that's fine, goodness knows you've fallen in love with books that didn't grab you in the first paragraph. But that doesn't stop you from wishing they would, from wishing they would come right up to you in the dark of your mind and kiss you on the throat.
Margo's baby shower was hosted by the owner of the restaurant where she worked, Tessa, who thought it would be funny if the cake was shaped like a big dick, maybe because Margo wasn't married, was nineteen, and couldn't even drink, or ...
Thorpe's twenty-year-old protagonist, Margo, has many troubles, of which money seems the most looming. Her life has taken a sudden, skidding U-turn, and she is experiencing a kind of existential whiplash. Margo is inexperienced and naïve, and when her favorite community college English professor first made it clear that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with her, she didn't even quite realize that she had a choice in the matter. After the relationship ends, she discovers she is pregnant. She decides to have the baby despite his and her mother Shyanne's strong resistance. She realizes that "she wasn't sure she wanted the baby so much as she wanted to prove to them both that they could not bend her conveniently to their will." This double consciousness is what makes Margo's character so compelling. She acts her age—young, impulsive at times—but also has a stubborn independence and a reflectiveness that allows her to learn from her experiences...continued
Full Review
(762 words)
(Reviewed by Danielle McClellan).
Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
A hilarious novel about making the most of what you've got. Sharp and funny by turns, this is an exceptionally tender look at young motherhood and love that also involves professional wrestling, and yes, OnlyFans. I gobbled it up. Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
Margo's Got Money Troubles is an audacious, wildly funny, completely unpredictable novel by a writer so singular that it's hard to compare her to anyone else. Rufi Thorpe writes wildness so well, the messiness of the choices we make, the strange ways we bend and twist ourselves to accommodate those choices, and she does it with the rare qualities of tenderness and empathy. An absolutely brilliant book. Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit
A thrilling, uproarious, and above all affirming exploration of one young woman's fight to make it in a world that's rooting against her. Margo is an unforgettable heroine, so real she walked right off the page and into my heart.In Margo's Got Money Troubles, Margo begins creating content on OnlyFans, which eventually becomes quite lucrative work. But what is OnlyFans? Is it a pornography hub? Is it even legal?
OnlyFans was started in London, England. It is a subscription-based online platform with messaging features. It basically acts as a video-hosting site, like YouTube, but its content creators can upload their own videos and put them behind a paywall. Their subscribers can then pay them monthly fees to access their videos, send them financial "tips," or pay on a pay-per-view basis. This setup grants the people creating the videos full control over who watches their videos and how much they will be paid each time someone accesses their work. ...
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