56 pages • 1 hour read
Margo's Got Money Troubles
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Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: The source text depicts drug use and addiction. It mentions sexual assault and contains offensive and derogatory language surrounding sex work.
Margo Millet, the novel’s protagonist, is narrating the story from a later point in her life. She describes the time when she is 19 years old and pregnant. She works as a waitress, and her boss, Tessa, throws her a baby shower. Margo pretends to laugh at the cake that is shaped like a penis, but later, she cries in the shower because she knows Tessa was making light of Margo’s tough situation. Both Shyanne, Margo’s mother, and Margo’s professor, Mark, who fathered the child, want her to have an abortion. However, Margo chooses not to.
Shyanne is of no help throughout Margo’s pregnancy. Though she is present for the baby’s birth, Shyanne does not take time off from her own job to help Margo. Margo names the baby Bodhi. She feels terrified and lost and takes Bodhi home to the apartment she shares with three other roommates. She keenly feels the lack of Shyanne’s help and support.
Margo’s first interaction with Mark was in his English class at Fullerton College. After Margo turned in an excellent paper, Mark complimented her on her work and asked her out for coffee. She eventually slept with him, even though he was married with kids and she wasn’t attracted to him. In retrospect, Margo thinks she did so because he seemed to hold so much power. During their affair, Mark wrote her poetry. Margo’s favorite is a piece titled “The Hungry Ghost.”
Throughout the chapter, the perspective switches between first- and third-person voices. Margo as the narrator acknowledges that it is easier for her to have sympathy for her past self when she narrates events in the third person, as if they happened to someone else.
Chapter 2 Summary
Mark and Margo only slept together a few times; they stopped because Mark claimed he felt too guilty. However, he proclaimed he still loved her and wanted them to keep seeing and writing to each other.
When Margo discovered she was pregnant, she first called Shyanne in tears. She then told Mark, who immediately promised to pay for an abortion and be there with her through the procedure. Margo got upset, stating that the decision to get an abortion should be her choice, which unsettled Mark. He cut things off with her after that conversation, writing her one last email and asking her not to throw her life away for the baby.
Margo called her best friend from high school, Becca, who moved to New York for college. Becca thought it was ridiculous that Margo wanted to keep the baby, even though Margo kept saying that it felt like the right thing to do. Eventually, Becca agreed that Margo should give it some thought; however, Margo left that conversation feeling unsatisfied.
When Margo finally got an appointment with a doctor, she was already eight weeks along. She heard the baby’s heartbeat and cried, unsure of what to do.
Chapter 3 Summary
After the appointment, Margo met Shyanne, who realized Margo wanted to keep the baby. This disappointed Shyanne, who felt like she had failed as a mother and that Margo could have made something of herself without the baby. Margo wondered what Becca, Mark, and Shyanne thought she might have accomplished with her life. Shyanne declared outright that she wouldn’t take care of the baby and that it would be solely Margo’s responsibility. Shyanne also didn’t want to tell her extremely religious partner, Kenny, about the situation.
Shyanne then talked about how she got pregnant with Margo. At a bar, she met Margo’s father, Jinx, who used to be a professional wrestler, and they had a one-night stand. Shyanne didn’t know he was married. However, Jinx was happy about Shyanne’s pregnancy, and he continued to visit her and help out whenever he was in town, despite having his own family.
Afterward, Margo canceled the abortion appointment. She wrote to Mark about her decision when she crossed the 16-week mark; he didn’t respond. She told Jinx, too, who was very calm about the situation and looked forward to becoming a grandfather.
After Bodhi is born, however, Margo realizes how alone she is. Her friends stop coming around because they don’t know how to be around a baby. Her mother doesn’t help. Two of her roommates, “Kat the Larger” and “Kat the Smaller,” act like Bodhi is a huge inconvenience. One night, tired of hearing him cry, the two Kats ask Margo to leave the house with him so they can sleep in peace. Margo wanders the streets with her baby for an hour, wishing someone would be kind to them.
Chapter 4 Summary
Shyanne is extremely awkward with Bodhi, which Margo didn’t anticipate. She also learns that Shyanne had to parent by herself, too; when Margo was three weeks old, Jinx injured his back while working in Japan and couldn’t be around. The first time he saw Margo was after he had surgery and rehab, and he then spent time with his own wife and children. By then, Margo was nine months old.
Margo goes back to work after six weeks, but she is unable to find or afford a regular sitter. Shyanne tries watching Bodhi a couple of times, but he never settles down or takes a bottle with her or anyone else. One day, Shyanne is forced to bring Bodhi into the restaurant in the middle of Margo’s shift. Tessa later tells Margo that she needs to make childcare arrangements by her next shift if she wants to keep her job. Margo doesn’t believe that Tessa is serious, but Tessa follows through on her threat and fires Margo.
Margo decides to file for unemployment. The very next morning, her roommates the Kats tell her they are moving out. Margo panics, wondering how she will afford rent between just herself and Suzie, her other roommate, who has a parttime position at the dean’s office and doesn’t have much money, either. The money from unemployment is not enough, so Margo calls Jinx and leaves him a voicemail, asking for help.
Shyanne calls Margo, inviting her to have dinner with Kenny, who wants to officially meet her. However, Margo refuses when she learns that Kenny still doesn’t know about Bodhi.
Chapter 5 Summary
The day the Kats move out, Suzie tells Margo that she is happy they have left. She reveals she might have some friends who could move in, instead. Margo is unsure about having Suzie’s friends as roommates. Suzie enjoys LARPing (playing Live Action Role-Player games) and dressing in cosplay; Margo finds this a little weird, and she doesn’t know if she wants more of the same crowd around. To Margo’s surprise, Suzie then asks if she can hold Bodhi; this is the first time she has ever done so.
Margo grows increasingly desperate for money, and she finally emails Mark and asks for financial help. She is surprised when she gets a phone call from his mother instead, who asks to meet. His mother makes Margo sign an NDA and agree to never contact Mark or attend Fullerton again. In exchange, she gives Margo $15,000 up front and sets up a trust for Bodhi that will mature into $300,000 by the time he turns 18.
Shyanne finally tells Kenny about Bodhi, and Margo goes to dinner with them. She discovers that Shyanne has been hiding things about herself from Kenny, including the fact that she drinks; this makes Margo uncomfortable. Kenny assures Margo that he isn’t judging her for having a baby out of wedlock. Instead, he approves of her taking responsibility for the consequences of her actions. Kenny asks for Margo’s blessing and proposes to Shyanne at dinner, who is thrilled and accepts immediately.
Chapter 6 Summary
A week later, Jinx turns up unannounced. He reveals that he was in rehab for a heroin addiction, which is why he didn’t have his phone with him. He says he came as soon as he heard Margo’s voicemails. Jinx, who managed a pair of wrestlers after his injury, is now out of work—one of the wrestlers he managed passed away a few years prior and the second one just retired. He is also getting a divorce. He first visited Shyanne, hoping to get back with her, but discovered Kenny there. After learning that Margo might need a roommate, he headed over.
Although Margo insists that Shyanne would leave Kenny in a heartbeat for Jinx, Jinx claims that this situation is likely better for everyone as he has never been able to stay faithful to a woman. Margo asserts that if he stays with her, he needs to be clean; Jinx promises he will be, revealing that he entered rehab voluntarily. He is extremely loving and gentle with Bodhi, and Margo agrees to let him stay.
Jinx officially moves in after Margo consults with Suzie. That evening, the three of them watch wrestling together. Jinx comments that a wrestler, Arabella, was picked up by another league after she was asked to leave WWE. Her contract was terminated because she had an OnlyFans account. (OnlyFans is an online platform where creators can make money by sharing adult content with paid subscribers.) Arabella refused to quit the platform, saying she made more money on OnlyFans in a month than she did from wrestling in an entire year.
Intrigued, Margo creates an OnlyFans profile that night. She names herself “HungryGhost” and explores the platform. She finds and subscribes to Arabella’s account, and she is surprised to find that in her videos, Arabella wears sexy clothing but only plays video games. Most other accounts, though, are more like what Margo imagined, with women putting up sexual pictures and videos. Margo wonders if she can do something on OnlyFans to make money.
Chapter 7 Summary
Margo keeps going back to OnlyFans, wondering what kind of content she can post. She looks through more accounts and finds one of a woman who calls herself “WangMangler” and offers paid reviews of men’s penises. On her account, Margo puts up pictures of her breasts and offers a similar service. There is no activity for days, but a customer finally signs up and sends Margo a picture of his penis. Margo sends across a review and immediately receives $20; she is thrilled. Her subscriber count slowly grows to 20. She still makes less than she did as a waitress, but Margo thinks about how she can grow her income on the website.
Margo realizes the problem with OnlyFans is that it has no discoverability—the most successful accounts belong to people who were celebrities already. She asks Jinx about building celebrity status, and Jinx explains how professional wrestlers build their personas. He also describes how new wrestlers often film tapes of themselves wrestling with their buddies to send out to organizations and hopefully get picked up.
Margo ponders this and reaches out to WangMangler, asking if she would be willing to cross-promote Margo’s account for a fee. WangMangler asks Margo to make an account on TikTok and agrees to promote one of Margo’s TikTok videos for a few days, for a fee. However, after Margo sends across the $500 they agreed upon, WangMangler insists Margo must offer her subscription at a discount to WangMangler’s fans for a certain amount of time. Margo is disappointed but sees no way out. She does as instructed before rushing to the bathroom to throw up.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
The narrative style of Margo’s Got Money Troubles creates sympathy for its protagonist while also highlighting her objectivity and self-awareness as she narrates the story. The novel establishes early on that Margo, the protagonist, is also the self-aware narrator of the book who is speaking about events that took place in the past. She declares that she finds it easier to describe some of her experiences from the perspective of an observer, which is why she chooses to narrate the book’s events in the third person. When Margo addresses readers in the present, she switches to the first person; these shifts from first to third person occur throughout the novel. In this way, Margo directly appeals to readers’ sympathy while speaking in the first person, while also maintaining an air of objectivity and self-awareness while discussing her past experiences in the third person. This narrative decision highlights the difficult nature of her past since she does not wish to relive it, even while narrating it.
The metanarrative quality of the novel feeds into the development of its characters as well. Margo comes across as a talented, creative storyteller from the outset. Her professor, Mark, first notices her in class because of this very quality. Margo’s storytelling abilities are also relevant to the work she eventually finds herself in, since she crafts an engaging persona for herself on OnlyFans. Also, as the seemingly omniscient narrator in the book, she crafts the story to present herself and her experiences in a certain light. Margo as a character comes across as distinctly different from the others around her, especially Shyanne. While Margo shares a few similarities with her mother, they only serve to highlight the differences between them. They are both single mothers, and their children were fathered by married men with families of their own. However, Margo and Shyanne approach their respective situations in starkly different ways: Margo is decidedly independent and self-sufficient, refusing to compromise on her authenticity, while Shyanne tends to edit and adapt who she is to guarantee a man’s help and protection in her life. This way of distinguishing Margo’s character by comparing herself to another is a creative technique that Margo actively employs later in the book, when crafting her online persona. Thus, Margo the narrator and Margo the character interact and influence each other within the novel.
The theme of Patriarchal Standards of Women’s Morality emerges early in the novel. The initial chapters of the book highlight some common and problematic societal attitudes, especially surrounding women and sex. Margo has an affair with her professor, Mark, and ends up pregnant. She admits that she was never attracted to him and only slept with him because he was in a position of power as her professor. This situation highlights the problematic nature of sexual relationships that women often feel coerced into due to uneven power dynamics. However, it is Mark who breaks off the relationship, claiming he feels guilty about cheating on his wife; he never acknowledges that he has abused his power over Margo. Later, when Margo is desperate for money and contacts him for financial help, his mother asks Margo to sign an NDA, getting her to promise she will never contact Mark again, before she offers Margo money. Mark and his family view Margo as a predatory individual who can destroy their lives, rather than seeing Mark for what he is: A sexual predator who abused his position of power when he slept with his student and then abandoned her when she became pregnant and needed his help.
In another example that highlights the problems with patriarchal standards regarding female sexuality, Shyanne is upset that Margo is pregnant because she worries that her partner, Kenny, who is very religious, will disapprove. Shyanne is ashamed that her daughter is unmarried and pregnant, which is proof that she was having sex outside of marriage. So, she doesn’t tell Kenny about the pregnancy for a long time. The novel shows how patriarchal standards of morality aim to control women’s sexuality and how power, shame, and secrecy are all woven into how society thinks about women’s sexuality.
A second central theme that emerges is The Challenges of Single Motherhood. Margo chooses to have Bodhi despite Shyanne and Mark both advising her against it. Although single motherhood is something Margo chooses for herself, she is also just 19 years old and not equipped with enough information to grasp the magnitude of this choice. However, she quickly comes to realize that she has no support or resources at her disposal: Her roommates complain that the baby is too loud, her mother is indifferent, Mark breaks off all contact, and her boss fires her. Her struggles with finding childcare on her tight budget highlight the absence of institutional support, as well.
Another theme the novel touches upon is Digital Consumerism, Creativity, and Dual Identities. While this theme is explored in more depth later in the book, it is set up in these early chapters. The novel refers to Suzie’s LARPing and penchant for cosplay, highlighting the potential for creativity and dual identities on online platforms. It also mentions websites such as OnlyFans and TikTok, where creators can not only create material but also monetize it. As Margo immerses herself in the digital world, she learns more about the mechanisms of presenting herself as content to be consumed. To do this, she draws on Jinx’s advice derived from his experience in the world of professional wrestling; although wrestling is not a digital space, it prioritizes the creation of personas and storytelling to draw in a wide audience. In this way, the novel explores how all aspects of personhood can be turned into content for entertainment and consumption, especially in digital spaces and on social media.
One of the most striking symbols in the novel is the motif of the “Hungry Ghost.” The phrase is the title of one of the poems that Mark wrote for her during their affair, and she eventually adopts it as her OnlyFans username. Margo takes this phrase that emerged in the context of a sexually exploitative relationship and uses it to control her narrative instead. As “HungryGhost” on OnlyFans, she uses her sexual desirability to obtain what she wants—money—in a powerful, yet non-exploitative, way. Her username foreshadows how Margo will continue to subvert ideas and attitudes surrounding women and sex throughout the novel.
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