Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
The unnamed narrator of Pizza Girl is 18 years old, Korean-American, pregnant, and single. She lives with her mother and boyfriend who are supportive to the point of suffocation, and delivers pizzas at night. Pizza Girl's father died a year earlier of alcoholism and as she works through her grief, she fears she is more like her father than she originally thought. She thinks a lot about han, a Korean concept described as a sickness of the soul, an acceptance that life will be filled with sorrow and resentment. As a pizza delivery girl, she encounters all kinds of people, and their lives seem perfect when compared to her own (until she learns that many of her customers are hiding dark secrets). Delivering pizzas is just a job until a customer requests a pizza with pepperoni and pickles (how gross is that??). The woman begins ordering the same pizza every week, and soon Pizza Girl is obsessed with the woman and her life.
The narrator hits new lows in characters making bad decisions and disturbing behavior: unmarried, pregnant, no interest in college or a stable job, heavy drinking during pregnancy/heavy underage drinking, sexual confusion and obsession, theft, housebreaking, and just general aimlessness. But the reader can't help feeling a certain tenderness toward this teenager and her raw emotions, her overall depression. Small wonder that she continually grabs onto anyone or anything that interrupts her hopelessness.
There is a lot of stream of consciousness going on here, with the narrator frequently distracted by random thoughts. The story and the main character were messier, more complicated and darker than I was expecting, especially with the colorful graffiti-like cover art. I would have liked to know more about the family's background, their experience with racism as Korean immigrants, There is some black humor but not enough to deflect the main character's overall depression. I was expecting more from the ending, but there really wasn't any resolution.
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