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Worms Limited Thora.
It’s 2009 and summer is encroaching on the town of Bellingen when Rhiannon is forced to move from her local high school to one in Coffs Harbour. Initially reluctant to leave behind her best friend Ellie, she quickly finds herself infatuated with the enigmatic Vanora. It’s only on befriending her, does she discover that like her, Vanora is a girl whose home life is shrouded in a web of secrets. Secrets that relate to her mother.
Set in the verdant Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia, Thora deals with family dysfunction, emancipation through friendship, and how girlhood is affected by the isolation of the country and the solace of nature.
Tilly Lawless is a queer, Sydney-based sex worker and writer. Her debut title Nothing But My Body was published in 2021.
Cover art by Rufus Shakespeare
Paperback with hand drawn dust jacket with fold-our map by Rufus Shakespeare
Set in the verdant Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia, Thora deals with family dysfunction, emancipation through friendship, and how girlhood is affected by the isolation of the country and the solace of nature.
Tilly Lawless is a queer, Sydney-based sex worker and writer. Her debut title Nothing But My Body was published in 2021.
Cover art by Rufus Shakespeare
Paperback with hand drawn dust jacket with fold-our map by Rufus Shakespeare
164 pages, Paperback
Published February 15, 2024
3 people are currently reading
151 people want to read
About the author
Tilly Lawless
3 books99 followersTilly Lawless is a queer, Sydney-based sex worker who utilises her online platform to speak about her personal experiences within the sex industry, in an attempt to shine a light on the every day stigma that sex workers come up against. Growing up in rural NSW, her writing is often a bucolic love letter to the countryside that she comes from, and also a deeply intimate insight into queer romance and relationships. You can read her writing in various publications, but it's best going straight to the source and reading it directly from her Instagram, @tilly_lawless.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 8, 2025
Beginning with the good:
Tilly has the coolest name for an activist writer. ‘Tilly Lawless’, you couldn’t make it up. The book succeeds as a coming-of-age exploration of teen queer sexuality, complicated mother/daughter relations, and a portrayal of rural NSW. The relationship between Rhi and Angela is the most compelling thing about this book. I also like the way Lawless probes into sex through her teenage protagonist; curiously, at times like an anthropologist or a fly on the wall. She’s able to explore sex with greedy curiosity as well as tender emotion.
Moving on to the bad:
The book did not succeed as a piece of magic realism. I am not joking when I say that I could explain the genre-related shortcomings with reference to Twilight—yes, Twilight. There is no attempt to build an atmosphere fitting of the genre. Tilly doesn’t subtly build a world that suspends belief, and she doesn’t take you on a journey of suspicion or inquisition or even paint a picture as believable as the mysterious woods of the North West in which something otherworldly might happen, she just crams mythical elements into the story at irregular intervals in a way that jars with the hyper-realistic depiction of lower-middle class teenage life. In Twilight, you at least had a series of events where the protagonist suspected something super-natural about their love interest and went through a gradual and drawn out period of building trust and disbelief that culminated in an earth-shattering revelation of the supernatural. In Thora, Vee, the protagonist’s love interest, just explains the mythical elements of her life in a few short lines, and Tilly describes the dialogue and the protagonist’s reaction instead of actually having the characters do it—both when the supernatural is explained to the protagonist as well as to the protagonist’s best friend, Ellie. Building a world in which magical and supernatural things can happen is difficult for a writer to achieve, so is portraying a relatable character going through a process of believing in the supernatural, and these were some of the things Stephanie Myer did in Twilight (don’t get me wrong, it’s still Twilight…). Unfortunately, Tilly either isn’t up to the challenge or just doesn’t make the attempt—when a character needs to believe in something, everyone just turns into NPCs and the vibe is: “And then this happened for the plot.”
I wouldn’t call this book ‘magic realism’, I would call it a semi-autobiographical depiction of Aussie youth in which the author halfheartedly introduces mythical elements to give it the stakes necessary for there to be a semblance of a plot.
There are other narrative faults as well. The book has around three believable characters and then a bunch of interchangeable stand-ins who appear in my mind as the grey face outline of the default Facebook picture. Tilly also, inexplicably and without clear purpose or consequence, starts shifting perspectives around two thirds of the way in, haphazardly jumping from character to character, and on one occasion into the future when reflecting on the internet. I also struggled to summon a mental image of what was happening throughout the novel and where it was happening, especially as it progressed. The more pages one turns, the book feels sloppier and more undercooked.
And finishing with the ugly:
Lawless offers glimpses of talent and craftsmanship (craftswomanship?) but so often slips into clumsy expression. She leans on self-indulgent exposition to communicate her more interesting thoughts on culture and gender; and while these aspects of her writing would make for excellent tweets, they do nothing for the narrative. Lawless is yet to develop the skill to present world views as part of a narrative that works within a novel, and certain aspects of her writing feel like a high school English essay crammed into a creative writing project. The ‘show don’t tell’ criticism is a banal one, especially because exposition can be meaningful and an excellent way to touch and move a reader, but Lawless doesn’t execute exposition well, and ‘show don’t tell’ is in fact fitting feedback for her writing. There is also so much ‘described dialogue’ that simply masks exposition which I found lazy.
Another thing was how Sasha presented as a self-insert. There is a scene in which Sasha, a sex-worker, debates the morality/utility of her profession with her daughter. And it was incredibly self-serving on Tilly’s behalf. Don’t get me wrong: support sex-workers, and support sex workers’ rights, and support humanity and empathy and co-existence generally. But if you want to show me an argument between a teenage girl and her mother regarding the merits of the mother being a sex worker and the daughter becoming a victim of bullying because of it, don’t make the girl a push-over who emotionally processes the situation with speed that would be impossible for even the most mature teenager. Tilly basically puts her own thoughts on sex work into Sasha’s mouth and puts some very basic soft-ball criticisms into Ellie’s mouth, and then has Sasha win in a quick exchange.
I would have liked/retweeted what Sasha had to say if Tilly just said it (if I had twitter), but this doesn’t mean presenting these same sentiments works in a narrative format. Ellie and Sasha didn’t feel like they had any agency in the plot, just that they were puppets Lawless inhabited for the purpose of an argument which she wanted to present, and it came across as painfully cultivated. I also felt a bit intellectually cheated—there is a much more fruitful and challenging argument to be had regarding sex work than the one offered in that argument. Tilly ignores feminist critiques of sex work, for example. It also felt odd that Ellie, who appears to be the brightest/highest EQ character in the book, had zero emotional or intellectual reaction to finding out that her father was likely a client of her mother and that her life was likely the product of a capitalist sex-work transaction. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, but I would expect some turmoil, some reflection, some processing, some growth.
I am supportive for pro-sex work views to come out on top in this novel, or in any novel or in any conversation, I am just not happy for art to make a mockery of the exchange of ideas. I should say, however, that making Sasha the one who essentially ‘fights the bad guy at the end’ within the context of a sexual encounter with a client was really cool. I really liked the sex worker being the knight in shining armor.
There are also well-meaning but strained and sometimes inane comments that touch on indigeneity that made me cringe. Again, if Tilly had tweeted certain points of view, I would have loved it, but just because I agree with a point of view doesn’t mean that I want to see it unskillfully crammed into a novel.
I was also surprised that Tilly fell into the trope of having a non-white character raised by a white parent as a way for a white author to introduce a POC without having to struggle with/attempt authenticity.
TLDR:
What is this book about? It’s trying to be too many things and doesn’t achieve any of it. The only respect in which it does succeed is in depicting a mother-daughter relationship within the context of queer working/welfare class Aussie teenagers. That’s the story Tilly had to tell, whether she realises it or not. Everything else is extraneous.
With that said, the story of mother and daughter is an important and a touching one, and people, especially young Aussies and (I suspect) queer people, will likely take something from that story. I haven’t yet read Tilly’s other book, and despite Thora falling short, I will do so, and I also look forward to reading future projects of hers as well.
Tilly has the coolest name for an activist writer. ‘Tilly Lawless’, you couldn’t make it up. The book succeeds as a coming-of-age exploration of teen queer sexuality, complicated mother/daughter relations, and a portrayal of rural NSW. The relationship between Rhi and Angela is the most compelling thing about this book. I also like the way Lawless probes into sex through her teenage protagonist; curiously, at times like an anthropologist or a fly on the wall. She’s able to explore sex with greedy curiosity as well as tender emotion.
Moving on to the bad:
The book did not succeed as a piece of magic realism. I am not joking when I say that I could explain the genre-related shortcomings with reference to Twilight—yes, Twilight. There is no attempt to build an atmosphere fitting of the genre. Tilly doesn’t subtly build a world that suspends belief, and she doesn’t take you on a journey of suspicion or inquisition or even paint a picture as believable as the mysterious woods of the North West in which something otherworldly might happen, she just crams mythical elements into the story at irregular intervals in a way that jars with the hyper-realistic depiction of lower-middle class teenage life. In Twilight, you at least had a series of events where the protagonist suspected something super-natural about their love interest and went through a gradual and drawn out period of building trust and disbelief that culminated in an earth-shattering revelation of the supernatural. In Thora, Vee, the protagonist’s love interest, just explains the mythical elements of her life in a few short lines, and Tilly describes the dialogue and the protagonist’s reaction instead of actually having the characters do it—both when the supernatural is explained to the protagonist as well as to the protagonist’s best friend, Ellie. Building a world in which magical and supernatural things can happen is difficult for a writer to achieve, so is portraying a relatable character going through a process of believing in the supernatural, and these were some of the things Stephanie Myer did in Twilight (don’t get me wrong, it’s still Twilight…). Unfortunately, Tilly either isn’t up to the challenge or just doesn’t make the attempt—when a character needs to believe in something, everyone just turns into NPCs and the vibe is: “And then this happened for the plot.”
I wouldn’t call this book ‘magic realism’, I would call it a semi-autobiographical depiction of Aussie youth in which the author halfheartedly introduces mythical elements to give it the stakes necessary for there to be a semblance of a plot.
There are other narrative faults as well. The book has around three believable characters and then a bunch of interchangeable stand-ins who appear in my mind as the grey face outline of the default Facebook picture. Tilly also, inexplicably and without clear purpose or consequence, starts shifting perspectives around two thirds of the way in, haphazardly jumping from character to character, and on one occasion into the future when reflecting on the internet. I also struggled to summon a mental image of what was happening throughout the novel and where it was happening, especially as it progressed. The more pages one turns, the book feels sloppier and more undercooked.
And finishing with the ugly:
Lawless offers glimpses of talent and craftsmanship (craftswomanship?) but so often slips into clumsy expression. She leans on self-indulgent exposition to communicate her more interesting thoughts on culture and gender; and while these aspects of her writing would make for excellent tweets, they do nothing for the narrative. Lawless is yet to develop the skill to present world views as part of a narrative that works within a novel, and certain aspects of her writing feel like a high school English essay crammed into a creative writing project. The ‘show don’t tell’ criticism is a banal one, especially because exposition can be meaningful and an excellent way to touch and move a reader, but Lawless doesn’t execute exposition well, and ‘show don’t tell’ is in fact fitting feedback for her writing. There is also so much ‘described dialogue’ that simply masks exposition which I found lazy.
Another thing was how Sasha presented as a self-insert. There is a scene in which Sasha, a sex-worker, debates the morality/utility of her profession with her daughter. And it was incredibly self-serving on Tilly’s behalf. Don’t get me wrong: support sex-workers, and support sex workers’ rights, and support humanity and empathy and co-existence generally. But if you want to show me an argument between a teenage girl and her mother regarding the merits of the mother being a sex worker and the daughter becoming a victim of bullying because of it, don’t make the girl a push-over who emotionally processes the situation with speed that would be impossible for even the most mature teenager. Tilly basically puts her own thoughts on sex work into Sasha’s mouth and puts some very basic soft-ball criticisms into Ellie’s mouth, and then has Sasha win in a quick exchange.
I would have liked/retweeted what Sasha had to say if Tilly just said it (if I had twitter), but this doesn’t mean presenting these same sentiments works in a narrative format. Ellie and Sasha didn’t feel like they had any agency in the plot, just that they were puppets Lawless inhabited for the purpose of an argument which she wanted to present, and it came across as painfully cultivated. I also felt a bit intellectually cheated—there is a much more fruitful and challenging argument to be had regarding sex work than the one offered in that argument. Tilly ignores feminist critiques of sex work, for example. It also felt odd that Ellie, who appears to be the brightest/highest EQ character in the book, had zero emotional or intellectual reaction to finding out that her father was likely a client of her mother and that her life was likely the product of a capitalist sex-work transaction. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, but I would expect some turmoil, some reflection, some processing, some growth.
I am supportive for pro-sex work views to come out on top in this novel, or in any novel or in any conversation, I am just not happy for art to make a mockery of the exchange of ideas. I should say, however, that making Sasha the one who essentially ‘fights the bad guy at the end’ within the context of a sexual encounter with a client was really cool. I really liked the sex worker being the knight in shining armor.
There are also well-meaning but strained and sometimes inane comments that touch on indigeneity that made me cringe. Again, if Tilly had tweeted certain points of view, I would have loved it, but just because I agree with a point of view doesn’t mean that I want to see it unskillfully crammed into a novel.
I was also surprised that Tilly fell into the trope of having a non-white character raised by a white parent as a way for a white author to introduce a POC without having to struggle with/attempt authenticity.
TLDR:
What is this book about? It’s trying to be too many things and doesn’t achieve any of it. The only respect in which it does succeed is in depicting a mother-daughter relationship within the context of queer working/welfare class Aussie teenagers. That’s the story Tilly had to tell, whether she realises it or not. Everything else is extraneous.
With that said, the story of mother and daughter is an important and a touching one, and people, especially young Aussies and (I suspect) queer people, will likely take something from that story. I haven’t yet read Tilly’s other book, and despite Thora falling short, I will do so, and I also look forward to reading future projects of hers as well.
January 7, 2025
Mermaids, friendship, women, queerness, escape, connection with place.
August 14, 2024
Tilly Lawless is an icon and a role model. Her writing is unpretentious, emotion driven and raw. I saw her talk about this book earlier this year. She decided to publish it independently after grappling with the book business throughout her first memoir/novel Nothing But My Body and prior to Thora’s release. Her main frustration was the publisher’s insistance on making her characters more ‘palatable’ to a ‘wide audience’. The young teenagers in Thora are just that, young and teenage. They party. They swim in the river. They follow their moral compass into danger. They love hard. They spend their Centrelink on goon sacks. I’m sure Tilly could have made more money selling this book with a main stream publisher. It might have been picked up by a production company as it would make an incredible series for young audiences- Skins meets H2O Just Add Water. I hope this is still a possibility as I’m sure it would be incredibly popular with young women who are on the cusp of sensible womanhood but longing to ride horses, swim in rivers, kiss each other at parties and seek justice for the oppressed.
Support independent writing. Support Australian writing. Read this book.
Support independent writing. Support Australian writing. Read this book.
November 4, 2024
Brilliant writer whose work I adore. Unfortunately, this book fell a bit short of expectations. A teen lesbian romance novel set in rural Australia, Thora portrays young love and lust so sweetly. Very sapphic in its addition of mythology to an otherwise realistic fiction, I had wished Tilly would have leaned into a fantasy world more. At times, I felt lost and disengaged while reading, having difficulty sorting through fluff and piecing together the central tenants of the plot.
November 3, 2024
Exceptional, easy to read, well written, great character development, and that australiana aspect I crave in any book. I wish I could have read this book when I was 16. At least I can be kind to my inner 16 yr old self because of this book. There were aspects of each character that deeply interacted with my own psych and many side stories that were on point. One for all women.
May 14, 2025
Loved the story and the fairytale element! So refreshing to read a book from the area of NSW that I grew up in, and a queer love story at that.
Felt like it needed another thorough edit as some of the writing felt amateur, but at other times was beautiful.
Felt like it needed another thorough edit as some of the writing felt amateur, but at other times was beautiful.
August 20, 2024
Unfortunately, another literally unreadable Tilly Lawless book.
December 21, 2024
This was excellent
January 6, 2025
Such a beautiful and hilarious read, wish I was able to have read this as a teenager. Tilly is tapped into the deep feelings and ambitions of teenagers as they come of age
June 23, 2025
Really loved this. Love DIY writing. The unpolishedness just adds to the feeling and coming of ageness of the whole thing.
January 6, 2025
Another incredible Tilly Lawless book. A really well-written narrative of three young girls navigating their early teen years and coming to terms with their sexuality. I wish I could have read this when I was a teenager
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews