BookBrowse Reviews Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

BookBrowse:

A young woman's life changes when she becomes a single mother, and she must create a new support system and navigate financial challenges to care for her infant.

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.

This review first ran in the November 20, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.