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Author profile — Rufi Thorpe
Madeleine FeenyNew Titles Fiction Previewer
I compile the monthly New Titles: Fiction. A freelance critic and editor, I previously held ...more
Rufi Thorpe’s punchy new superhero narrative takes on sex work stigma.
New Titles Fiction Previewer
I compile the monthly New Titles: Fiction. A freelance critic and editor, I previously held ...more
Why does Wonder Woman have to be so virginal?” asks American author Rufi Thorpe. She wanted to write a novel that fused the “two ways our culture is messed up about women”, creating a madonna/whore superhero who is both a mother and a sex worker. The idea simmered on the back-burner until OnlyFans took off during the pandemic, when Thorpe noticed that reactions to performers such as comedians joining the platform were less critical than those usually accorded to sex work – perhaps because it’s remote, and the profit margins are so impressive. Spotting a way into the subject, she began writing Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a funny, surprising and gloriously kickass bildungsroman that lobs a hand grenade into the childcare and sex work debates, raising questions about how we judge one another.
Thorpe, who has published three previous novels, believes she has motherhood to thank for her writing career, as she unexpectedly got pregnant aged 26 and discovered that childcare cost more than she earned.
“It’s remarkable how we’re unwilling to make basic legislation to protect this precious part of our lives,” says Thorpe. Literary success had always seemed like a pipe dream, but being financially backed into a corner gave her the impetus to stay at home with the baby and sell her first novel.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles, which feels like her breakout, defies conventional wisdom that you can’t base a plot on money because it’s not a strong enough motivating factor – wisdom that Thorpe had never questioned, although it contradicts real-life experience. “We are all making day-to-day decisions based on what we can afford, and people are interested in seeing that in art.”
We are all making day-to-day decisions based on what we can afford, and people are interested in seeing that in art
The novel taps into a political hot potato here in Britain: the government’s free childcare scheme seems mired in chaos, and Labour claims that childcare places in England have fallen by nearly 40,000 since the Conservatives gained power in 2010. Given the power of television (as evidenced by ITV’s Post Office drama, “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”) frazzled parents will be crossing fingers that Thorpe’s novel, which is being adapted by “Big Little Lies” creator David E Kelley into an Apple TV series starring Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning, could have real political impact.
Fanning will play Thorpe’s heroine Margo, a smart yet cash-strapped 19-year-old student in Fullerton, California, who was raised by single mum Shyanne, a former Hooters waitress. Margo has an affair with her college professor, a married father of two, who ditches her when she gets pregnant. Against all advice, Margo has the baby, a boy named Bodhi, and immediately loses her waitressing job. Two of her three flatmates bail, landing her with the rent, so in desperation she starts an OnlyFans account.
Yet no sooner does she start ‘making bank’ than moral judgement starts raining down on her. The novel charts Margo’s resilience in the face of a society unwilling to help her yet determined to shame her for her resourcefulness. Thorpe wanted to write a book dissecting the “actual mechanics of female empowerment”, where you can root for someone as they figure out what they want and how to get it. Aided by a colourful cast of misfits, including her estranged father, wrestling personality Dr Jinx, Margo learns to control her own narrative, becoming a ‘girlboss’.
And root you do, which is how the novel makes readers examine their anti-sex-work prejudice, much of which is grounded in “feeling that girls are taking risks with their safety in a way that implies self-disrespect, but that risk wouldn’t be there if sex workers had legal protections, so it’s one of those logical loop problems.” In fact, Thorpe’s research revealed OnlyFans performers to be “empowered businesswomen with excellent boundaries”. People are often happy to speak to authors for free, but Thorpe’s interviewees expected to be paid, and often refused her more emotional probes.
Another plot strand forces readers to question their preconceptions about drug addiction. When Thorpe was growing up, heroin use seemed distant and frightening, and then OxyContin arrived, and opioids became “an everybody problem”. Thorpe is interested in harm reduction, and in exploring how we deal with this “in a functional way instead of just demonising it”.
Thorpe is playful in her use of narrative position. As the child of actors, first person has always appealed because of its mask-like nature, “but I always felt like the real writers wrote in third”. Unable to choose, she decided to shift between the two, amplifying the novel’s themes of performance and artifice by “winking at” the reader in passages that break the fourth wall, where Thorpe peeps out from behind the Margo mask.
Performance links the novel’s two worlds of wrestling and sex work, as well as segues into gaming and cosplay. Writing it during the pandemic as her sons watched non-stop World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Thorpe was seduced by the theatricality of wrestling—its larger-than-life personalities and grand rivalries. Margo learns how to grow a fanbase from Jinx; audiences love tension, so wrestlers “build heat” by picking controversial fights. Thus Margo’s work is presented without prurience or prudishness, but simply as a job requiring psychological acumen.
Margo’s evolving connection with her dad is drawn with nuance and feeling, as is her close, but troubled, relationship with her mum. Thorpe was raised by a single mother and, since having children herself, understands more of what she went through. “It’s a transformative experience, and not having anyone to share that with, both the hard times and the good, was I think really tough for my mom.” In the novel, she gives Margo the support system of a found family.
What makes this inspiring story of an underdog overcoming adversity so infectiously feelgood is its affection for its characters. It may be a superhero narrative, but it resists cartoon villains, showing instead the social and economic pressures that make people act as they do. It illuminates the double binds in which women are caught, from abortion to childcare, and gives us a heroine whose imagination, courage and humour we can get behind. You’ll finish the book wishing to be more Margo.
Metadata
Imprint Sceptre
Publication 04.07.24
Format HB £16.99, EB £16.99
ISBN 9781399732505, 9781399732529
Rights Rights sold in 10 territories, including the US (William Morrow)
Editor Ansa Khan Khattak
Agent Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Agency
