'Margo's Got Money Troubles' review: It's crazy good

The cover art and title of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” don’t quite convey the wild ride readers who crack open this new fiction from Rufi Thorpe will take.

A brief plot summary: Margo gets knocked up at 19 by her community college professor, has the baby, drops out of school and discovers OnlyFans, where she flashes herself for money. Her father, Jinx, is a famous professional wrestler, now retired, who actually introduces her to OnlyFans and helps her grow her audience using many of the same techniques that made him a star in the ring.

Meanwhile, her mother, Shyanne, who spends considerable time altering her appearance in an effort to attract a man who can provide for her, begs Margo to stop selling visuals of her body for money because, “No man will marry you now.”

If that’s not strange enough, Thorpe also goes a little crazy with the book’s voice. Margo is always the narrator, but switches often from third- to first-person, because, “It is so much easier to have sympathy for the Margo who existed back then rather than try to explain how and why I did all the things that I did.”

For all her questionable life choices, Margo is someone readers will root for, and the love story that emerges as the heart of the novel — between Margo and one of her OnlyFans — seems quite plausible in the Age.

It wouldn’t be fair to spoil the final two sentences of the book, and curses on any reader who jumps ahead to them, but Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.