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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 because it was her professor who'd knocked her up. Tessa was an accomplished baker. She made all the restaurant's desserts herself and went all out on the penis cake: a hand-carved 3D phallus, twelve layers of sponge swirled in matte pink icing. She installed a hand pump, and after they sang For she's gonna have a huge baby to the tune of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," after Margo blew out the candles—why? it wasn't her birthday—Tessa gave the pump a sharp squeeze, and white pudding spurted out of the top and dribbled down the sides. Tessa whooped with glee. Margo pretended to laugh and later cried in the bathroom.
Margo knew Tessa had made the cake because she loved her. Tessa was both a mean and loving person. Once when Tessa found out the salad boy had no sense of taste or smell because he'd almost been beaten to death in his teens, she served him a plate of shaving cream and potting soil, telling him it was a new dessert. He ate two big bites before she stopped him.
Margo knew Tessa was trying to make light of a situation that was not happy. Turning tragedy into carnival was kind of her thing. But it seemed unfair that the only love available to Margo was so inadequate and painful.
Margo's mom, Shyanne, had told Margo that she should have an abortion. Her professor had been hysterical for Margo to have an abortion. In fact, 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. It had never occurred to her that if she took this position, they might simply interact with her less. Or, in the case of the professor, stop interacting with her altogether.
While Shyanne eventually accepted Margo's decision and even attempted to be supportive, the support itself wasn't always helpful. When Margo went into labor, her mom showed up to the hospital four hours late because she'd been driving all around town looking for a good teddy bear. "You are not going to believe this, Margo, but I wound up going back to Bloomingdale's because it had the best one!"
Shyanne worked at Bloomingdale's and had for almost fifteen years. The way her legs looked in sheer black pantyhose was one of Margo's earliest memories. Shyanne held out the bear, which was white with a slightly constipated face. She did a high, squeaky voice: "Push that li'l baby out, I wanna meet my friend!"
Shyanne was wearing so much perfume Margo was almost glad when she went to sit in the corner and started playing competitive poker games on her phone. PokerStars. That was her jam. She chewed gum and played poker all night long, stomping those jokers. That was what Shyanne always called them, the other players: "jokers."
There was a nurse who was rude and made fun of Margo's name choice. Margo named the baby Bodhi, like bodhisattva, which even her mom thought was stupid, but Shyanne slapped that nurse right across the jaw, and it caused a whole kerfuffle. It was also the time Margo ...
Excerpted from Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe. Copyright © 2024 by Rufi Thorpe. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Forgive me if I begin this review with an awkward confession. My first impression of author Rufi Thorpe's novel Margo's Got Money Troubles was a complete misfire. I picked it up and read on the back cover that the story centered on a young, single mother whose parents were a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler. My knee-jerk response was hell no!
My internal rant went something like this: too often contemporary novels depict poor or struggling people with buffoonish stereotypes. How many broadly drawn characters turn up in fiction hauling their shopping carts full of junk food through the aisles of Walmart? I (mistakenly as it turned out) assumed this novel might be doing the same thing, using basic generalizations like wrestler or Hooters waitress that encourage readers to sit smugly in their own privilege and their assumptions about what kind of lunkheads these people might be.
Thankfully, my brother loved Margo and encouraged me to read it. Within a very few pages, I realized that I had been utterly wrong. Rufi Thorpe treats her characters with generosity, humor, and grace, never once reducing them to cardboard cutouts. In fact, she subverts stereotypes on nearly every page. And on top of that, this book is hilarious.
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.
Once her son Bodhi is born, Margo is faced with two bedrock truths. She is both deeply in love with this tiny child, and she is utterly alone: "all around her she could feel the echoey space of no one caring about her or worrying about her or helping her." Her finances aren't great either, after two of her roommates suddenly move out and she loses her restaurant job. Luckily for Margo, one roommate stays in the apartment, and when Margo's father, Jinx, appears at her door after his latest round of rehab, she begins to cobble together an unlikely support system. The narrative moves back and forth from third to first person as Margo develops her own voice.
The novel is filled with delightful, rounded characters. It's true that Margo's mother, Shyanne, was a Hooters waitress when Margo was born, but by the time of the novel, she has been working retail at Bloomingdale's for 15 years. Shyanne is unpredictable and often frivolous, but she is also vulnerable in her deep desire to find security and is willing to remake herself as a church-goer for her new religious boyfriend. Jinx bears the physical scars of an ex-wrestler along with a pain-pill addiction—the result of one too many injuries. Although for most of Margo's life, he's been focused on his other family, recovery has grounded him, and he's now able to offer the unconditional love Margo has craved. All these characters are fully realized and complicated humans.
Ultimately, Margo begins to realize that financial freedom is the only path to independence. She opens an OnlyFans account (see Beyond the Book) despite opposition from almost everyone around her, and little by little she develops a strategy that will lead to financial freedom, even if the ramifications of her decisions lead to complications. Thorpe presents Margo's choices in a refreshingly neutral manner. In opening her OnlyFans account, Margo has full control of her video content and can set her own fees, which means that she is able to earn money in a sex work–adjacent field that is safe and legal. And yet, Margo faces an enormous amount of backlash from friends and family and is reported to Child Protective Services because of her work. Is this Margo's path to maturity and independence? Is she ultimately still being exploited? Rather than offering easy answers to questions like this, Thorpe leaves it to the reader to decide.
Reviewed by Danielle McClellan
Rated 5 out of 5
by Ann_Beman
Funny, sharp, empathetic exploration of creating your own narrative
Margo's dad has retired from his WWE pro-wrestling career and endured another stint in rehab before he moves in with Margo, his bastard daughter, who's recently gotten pregnant by her married English professor and has decided to have the baby, despite living in a shared apartment with fellow college students, losing her job, getting less than no help from her mother, and having no idea what she herself is doing as a mother. So why not try her hand (and new mom body parts) as an OnlyFans creator? What could go wrong?
Themes: coming of age, new motherhood, controlling your own narrative,
POV: we get the main character's POV from both first and third person -- "It's true that writing in third person helps me," Margo says. "It is so much easier to have sympathy for the Margo who existed back then than try to explain how and why I did all the things that I did."
Setting: mostly Margo's four-bedroom, one-bath apartment somewhere near the Fullerton College campus in Fullerton, Calif. Margo lives geographically close to Disneyland, but her situation is emotionally distant from the Happiest Place on Earth
Timeline: present day, between now and when OnlyFans was created in 2016
I loved it. Why? Author Rufi Thorpe managed to successfully tie in pro wrestling, OnlyFans, and the Virgin Mary. Margo and her supporting characters were richly drawn. And as laugh-out-loud funny as this book was, there were also philosophically challenging questions posed. Margo grew to have empathy for others and what they'd created for themselves, but also for her past self and the choices she'd made.
"I like getting to be the me now watching the past me. It's almost a way of loving myself. Stroking the cheek of that girl with my understanding. Smoothing her hair with my mind's eye."
(The only thing I didn't like was that the douchey baby daddy wears a Duke sweatshirt in one scene where he's supposed to look extra-douchey and pathetic. Oof, that hurts a Blue Devil's heart.)
This is a five-star-plus read that I highly recommend
Thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.
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. Creators earn 80 percent of the income generated by their videos, and reportedly earn an average of $1,300 a year. Some of them, of course, earn significantly more than this.
One might think that this kind of setup would work for a variety of content creators, from visual artists to musicians. However, although many celebrity and influencer content creators on OnlyFans do provide videos on topics ranging from exercise instruction to music performance, the vast majority of OnlyFans creators use their platform to provide sexual content.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the website took off in popularity, gathering over 170,000 new users per day. As of May 2023, OnlyFans had more than three million registered creators and 220 million registered users.
There has been some controversy over allegations of whether OnlyFans provides a portal for underage users or for children to show up in content. The company claims that their platform is designed to keep children out and explains that their technology is designed to scan for any images of children in videos. However, in May 2021, the BBC reported that OnlyFans was "failing to prevent underage users from selling and appearing in explicit videos," and in August of the same year, the United States Congress began an investigation of the company.
In October 2021, largely due to pressure from banks and credit card companies, the company announced that they would ban sexually explicit material. This decision was reversed only a few days later as users and creators protested; at that point, OnlyFans announced that they'd be able to resume the explicit content "due to banking partners' assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators."
In researching her novel, Rufi Thorpe interviewed a number of OnlyFans sexual content creators. Why did she decide to focus on OnlyFans? As she noted in an interview, "When OnlyFans started taking off during the pandemic, it seemed to fit into this really interesting morally gray area where people were just a little bit less quick to judge, and I saw my chance."
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