Book review: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

By Simon Demetriou

At the very end of Rufi Thorpe’s fourth novel, her narrator and eponymous protagonist declares, ‘…that’s all art is, in the end. One person trying to get another person they have never met to fall in love with them.’ So, the book provides its own metric for success: did the reader fall in love? Well, no. But that’s the problem with a measure that is so all-or-nothing as love. And in a book that’s as much about perspective and emotional nuance as Margo’s Got Money Troubles, it’s a shame to gamble it all in this way. Because even if there isn’t enough here to make you fall in love, I defy anybody who isn’t a sexist prude not to find plenty to like in Thorpe’s novel.

Why do you need to be a sexist prude not to like Margo’s Got Money Troubles? Because Margo is a teenage single mother who, after being ditched by the baby’s father (her college English professor) and by her child-intolerant roommates, and finding out her semi-retired pro-wrestler father – stage-name Dr Jinx – is an opioid addict and serial womaniser, turns to OnlyFans as a means of making a living. And, with the help of Jinx and her one remaining roommate, Suzie, Margo thrives. Ish. Sure, she spends her days comparing penises to Pokémon, has to arrange Jinx’s methadone treatment after his heroine relapse, gets doxxed and disowned, and has to fend off a custody battle from Bodhi’s (yes, her child is named the Sanskrit for seeker after enlightenment) father, as well as a CPS investigation. But through it all she finds out what love really is and how to live life on her own terms.

So, what’s not to love? The metafiction. The narration, which shifts from first to third person throughout, is framed by a metanarrative that begins on the first page and is intertwined with the fact that Mark, the professor/dad, encounters Margo through a course on narrative perspective. This turns into an ongoing commentary on art as the desperation to seek love with the unknown consumer, culminating in the quotation you read above. Meanwhile, these claims about art as love extend to Jinx’s wrestling and Margo’s content creation. It’s a cool idea, and it’s valid. But we could have arrived at it through just the reflections on wrestling and the evolution of Margo’s OnlyFans. The explicit novel-gazing is one layer too much, and detracts from the relationships the reader is forming with Thorpe’s characters. Which is a shame, as Margo, Jinx, Bodhi and Suzie are all lovable. And that’s why there’s more than enough to like about Margo’s Got Money Troubles.