A review by horourke
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

4.0

Pizza Girl is a coming-of-age character study that focuses on the more difficult parts of transitioning from a teenager to an adult. Our protagonist, Pizza Girl, is pregnant, depressed, and working a dead-end job as a pizza delivery girl. She lost her father, a tumultuous figure in her life, the year prior, and grapples with this loss and the lingering effects of having an alcoholic dad. She herself is an alcoholic, and resents how similar she is to her father. 

The turning point in the story is when she meets Jenny, a customer who orders pepperoni and pickle pizza. She soon becomes obsessed with Jenny, ignoring her loving mother and boyfriend in pursuit of a future with a stranger she barely knows. 

Pizza Girl is a deeply flawed and unreliable narrator, but perfectly encapsulates the ennui of teen hood, the resistance to change in the face of adulthood, and struggles with identity that come with this period in life. I can see how this novel would not be for everyone, but it was a quick read that easily kept my focus. I think many can relate to the questionable choices 18-year-old Pizza Girl makes, even if our teenage mistakes may not escalate to those of Pizza Girl.

I do wish the novel was a bit longer and developed the relationship with Pizza Girl and her late father more. She obviously carried a lot of pain in her relationship to him, but we only get brief snapshots of what he was like. Pizza Girl describes him as a largely one-dimensional figure, with alcoholism being his defining trait. Her mother provides more depth and context to who he was as a person, but I would’ve liked to explore that more. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings