Margo's Got Money Troubles
The writer has both control of the material and a loving eye, and the warmth of Thorpe’s tone, together with the thoroughness of her imagination and the artfulness of her pacing, means that skepticism is kept at bay. She sells us on both the characters and the plot, and her refusal to moralize, her ability to get behind her characters despite their mess and fecklessness ... Keeping the ship steady is one of the hardest things to do in an accessible work of comic fiction; often, a less skilled writer will decide too late that they want depth and meaning, and resort to chucking something difficult into the mix ... Thorpe ends this enormously entertaining and lovable book by offering her characters a way out. We want it for them, and they deserve it.
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Beyond Thorpe’s strong characters and tight plots, what sets her apart from her peers is the gnawing philosophical tension that rests at the center of her books ... Deploying a structural twist that also helps expand the way we understand her lead character’s experience, Thorpe gives Margo the liberty to shift from first to third person ... It’s exhilarating to find an author who wants to tell you a good yarn, but also ask a lot of complicated questions.
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This is a wholly original novel ... It’s a book that grabs and keeps your attention ... It wouldn’t be fair to spoil the final two sentences of the book, and curses on any reader who now jumps ahead to them, but Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.
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