A story about perseverance, forgiveness, and the answer to the question of what Pokemon is your dick most like.
Plot: Margo has been floating through life with little in the way of inter or introspection. At 20, she’s plowing her way through community college and her literature professor, though neither with any serious enthusiasm. Since her 37 year old prof was really confident about the pull out method, she winds up pregnant, and against every piece of advice, she decides to keep the baby. Why? Because it’s literally the first thing she recalls wanting, though she can’t say why. The man who got her pregnant unsurprisingly vanishes into thin air, and her mom is no use, but her father, a pro-wrestler who abandoned her mom when she wound up pregnant with Margo, happens to be back in town. Oh well. She’s got enough to worry about. Shenanigans ensue.
What a fantastic book, start to finish. Don’t read this review. I’ve already told you too much. It’s darkly funny, it’s sweet as all get out, and it will mess with your brain. If you like audio, Elle Fanning is absolutely perfect as Margo, who is both so clever and so incredibly young. Thorpe is an immaculate writer. You can tell every word, character and framing was carefully selected to create juxtaposition between choices and situations, playing the reader’s emotions like a damn fiddle. She sure played mine. Even the POV is used to depict Margo’s changing emotional state. Immaculate.
Go read it. Try to know as little as possible going in, and let Margo’s story carry you along. You won’t regret it.
*That said, some trigger warnings for this one: discussion of abortion, parental abandonment, loss of children, parental abuse, substance abuse, gambling addiction, and sex work (the practice of and stigma about).