Rufi Thorpe

Beautifully Gutpunching & Utterly Heartrending

It's hard to not feel extremely self conscious about reviewing a story that has a protagonist who lambasts reviews, but I think I understand the point being made extremely effectively and how little it actually has to do with reviews themselves. I'm still going to try my best.

I completely adored this short story. I was just talking to my partner about how I have come to discover just how much I enjoy these viscerally human stories of people, show more most often women, in such raw and emotional situations that are simply their lives. This extrapolation of how life happens and we find ourselves floating out to sea with no idea how we got there, or rather knowing, but having been made to feel we need to keep quiet and not even see it. There's just something so powerful about short stories like this that drag me into the lives of these people and rain their emotional blows, trials, and tribulations upon me that gives me some kind of connection and empathy that helps with my own difficulties. The short story format works so perfectly for these rich slivers of another's experience, and this is an exemplary example of that.

The performance is really something and makes the writing sing.

I wish I had more brainpower and better words to describe just how wonderful I found this story. I heartily recommend it, though your mileage may vary, and I will absolutely be reading more from this author. show less

Single mother Margo can’t keep a waitressing job because childcare is too expensive, but her boobs look great now so she decides to start an OnlyFans. Unfortunately she is very bad at it, so she gets her estranged father Jinx, a retired professional wrestler, to help her build a character and develop a fandom. But it turns out that the rest of her family, and her baby’s family, are not so encouraging.

An absolute banger of a book. I was expecting to love Margo, and I did, and I was show more expecting the story to be fun and funny and modern, and it is, but the writing is just incredible. It slowly slips from first to third person narration as the story moves along and then snaps back to first in a way that feels so intimate, just like Margo’s work. This is a story about taking sex work seriously - not as a tragedy but as a job. But it’s also a story about narrative - the narrative of an adult performer, the narrative of professional wrestling, the narrative we tell about ourselves to other people, the narrative we tell about ourselves to authorities, and the narrative of a book. And it’s really beautiful. show less

I don’t mean to make a terrible pun, but “The Knockout Queen” was a knockout of a read. I have never read a book that depicted a friendship between misfits that was so heartbreakingly honest and realistic.⁣
There were often graphic descriptions of violence and sexual acts mentioned, so sensitive readers should take heed. The author created two characters who were painfully real, complex, and at times unsympathetic. All Michael and Bunny desire is love and to be loved in return, and show more their desperation for it is felt through the pages. Despite their shortcomings, I often found myself rooting for both Michael and Bunny to have their happy endings. show less

You are about to begin reading a new book, and to be honest, you are a little tense. The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people's names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly show more know.

Margo is still a teenager when her English professor gets her pregnant. And in the following weeks, despite everyone telling her not to, she decides to keep the pregnancy. She has an apartment that she shares with three other girls, the man who told her, over and over, how much he loves her, her best friend Becca and her mother. And once she has Bodhi, the professor ghosts her, her mother quickly tells her that she will not be helping out, her best friend disappears from her life, two of her roommates move out and she loses her job. Margo does indeed have money troubles, but money is only one of her problems.

They had tried to warn her: her mother, Mark, even Becca. But when they talked about the opportunities she would be missing, she'd thought they meant a four-year college. She hadn't understood thy meant that every single person she met, every new friend, every love interest, every employer, every landlord, would judge her for having made what they all claimed was the "right" choice.

But she's not without resources. First, there's the one roommate who didn't leave, and then there's her father, someone who was largely absent while she was growing up but now, fresh out of rehab, he needs a place to stay and he can pay rent. And he gives her an idea of how she can make money to take care of her and Bodhi. None of it is ideal, but there's a chance this odd family can make it work, or maybe the underlying issues are too serious to paper over with love and effort.

This book surprised me. Thorpe's writing is light and smart and she often goes for the clever wordplay over a more sincere telling. And Margo is a young woman who hides her own feelings with her quick mind and a careless attitude. But as this novel progresses, it doesn't take the easy way, or the expected direction, but chooses to be more real and complex and muddled in ways that make it more than the breezy language indicates. I ended up rooting for Margo to figure out a road between the many obstacles placed in her way. show less