review: pizza girl
Title: Pizza Girl
Series: N/A
Author: Jean Kyoung Frazier
Genres: Literary
Publishing Date: 9 June 2020
Original Language: English
Pages: ~192
CW: Alcoholism, Pregnancy, Stalking, Death of parent, Grief, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, Vomit, Car accident
My Rating: 3.5 / 5
Read if you’re looking for:
Literary fiction about a young, pregnant woman who is slowly unraveling
A main character struggling with alcoholism & unresolved grief
A study of obsession & how we sometimes use it to avoid our troubles
Interesting & well-written characters
A dramatic ending
“I think some people are just born broken. I think about life as one big Laundromat and some people just have one little bag to do—it’ll only take them a quick cycle to get through—but others, they have bags and bags of it, and it’s just so much that it’s overwhelming to even think about starting. Is there even enough laundry detergent to get everything clean?”
This debut novel follows an 18-year-old, pregnant, Korean-American woman who has graduated high school, and doesn’t really know what to do with herself. She gets a job as a pizza delivery person, and lives with her mother and boyfriend. One day the pizza shop receives a phone call from a woman pleading with our main character to help her. It seems that the woman’s son will only eat if he can have a pickle and pepperoni pizza, with the pickles baked on. Our main character’s interest is piqued, and she brings the order to the house, meeting the middle-aged Jenny Hauser. Thus begins an obsession, with the main character becoming more and more disturbed, with her obsession taking over her life, eventually going to unhealthy and scary lengths to try to be closer to Jenny.
This short read hooked me at the beginning with its approachable and easy to read prose. I enjoyed the characters, they felt like real people, and the main character’s feelings of despair, obsession, and desperation were easily felt when reading. I think she could fall into the category of an unlikeable female main character, but I felt empathy and sadness for her as well. This book was a great debut, and I’m excited to see what Frazier writes in the future. There are a lot of difficult themes around addiction, depression, pregnancy, and obsession, so look more into the content warnings before picking it up. But, if you enjoy literary fiction about unhinged women, this is a good one!
“Han was a sickness of the soul, an acceptance of having a life that would be filled with sorrow and resentment and knowing that deep down, despite this acceptance, despite cold and hard facts that proved life was long and full of undeserved miseries, “hope” was still a word that carried warmth and meaning.”