Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
The unnamed narrator of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s PIZZA GIRL is an eighteen-year-old pregnant woman working as a delivery driver for a local pizza restaurant. She feels unmoored from her life – overwhelmed and directionless – and unable to connect to the child growing inside her. Until she meets Jenny Hauser.
Jenny is also feeling overwhelmed by her life. Her family just moved to Los Angeles for her husband’s job, and her small son refuses to eat anything until his parents move him back to Bismarck. Jenny is convinced that if she can find his favorite pepperoni and pickle pizza, he will learn to love their new home.
The narrator answers the phone when Jenny calls in and finds herself unable to say no to the odd request. When she makes the delivery, she gets drawn into Jenny’s life.
The pepperoni pickle pizza order becomes a regular Wednesday tradition. The narrator jumps for the phone all evening, hoping to intercept the call. When they discuss the narrator’s pregnancy, Jenny invites her to a young mothers support group. The narrator goes along, but the more time she spends with Jenny Hauser, the more she obsesses over the other woman.
She drives out of her way to cruise by the Hausers’ home. She imagines what their life would be like if she and Jenny ran away from Los Angeles together: starting a new life with the two of them and Jenny’s son.
The narrator neglects all the other people in her life. She comes home late at night with no explanation. She begins sneaking out to the shed while everyone else is asleep. She can’t seem to care about her life or her unborn baby.
Her mother and her boyfriend, Billy, are both excited about the baby. Billy wants to plan their future – he is even considering skipping out on his college scholarship so that he can take care of their new family.
Some of the narrator’s angst stems from their baby derailing the hopes that she and Billy had for the future. She is also afraid that they will grow to be too much like her own small, struggling family and, specifically, that she is too much like her deceased father.
When the narrator was young, she used to regularly bring her father home from drunken nights out. He was cruel to her and her mother, although her mother has many fond memories of him – things that the narrator doesn’t remember. He also used to sneak out to spend time alone in the shed. As the novel progresses, the narrator finds herself slipping right into the role he left behind.
PIZZA GIRL is a short and intense novel. The narrator jumps around to different points in her life, revealing new information as the book progresses. It’s difficult to be on her side, because she makes such terrible decisions, but I still wanted her to succeed. I wanted her to find a way to be content with life she already had.
Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian
