(reviewed by JD Jung)
An eighteen-year-old pregnant pizza delivery girl is lost, with no idea where she is headed in life. Even though she has a loving boyfriend who is excited about the baby, that isn’t enough. She has never been out of Los Angeles and yearns for more in life. Unfortunately, she also realizes that if she wasn’t pregnant, she would still be in the same place she is now.
Additionally, our pizza girl is afraid that she is too much like her recently deceased father who was an alcoholic. Grieving in her own way, she keeps going over this in her head. She’s also trying to figure out her love/hate relationship with her parents individually. Though she is somewhat unaware, she internalizes her feelings without communicating them to others, especially to her mother and boyfriend with whom she lives.
Her boredom with life takes a turn when she takes an order from a first-time customer, Jenny, who orders pizza with pickles on it for her eight-year-old son. This winds up being a weekly delivery and our pizza girl’s casual fascination with Jenny turns into a daunting obsession.
Pizza Girl takes the coming-of-age story to a unique place. Filled with dark humor, it reveals the humanness in all of us. The characters are not stereotypical, but complex and flawed.
I read this quirky story in one sitting as I couldn’t wait to discover what would happen next. I was not disappointed in the ending either.
This is a debut novel by Jean Kyoung Frazier, and I hope to read more from her.
