Pizza Girl: The poignant TikTok sensation and must-read debut
£7.30£8.50 (-14%)
Perfect for fans of Coco Mellors, R. F. Kuang and Yomi Adegoke, this electrifying debut and TikTok sensation charts the unlikely relationship between a pregnant teenage pizza delivery driver and a stressed-out, middle-aged mum.
Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl, our dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She’s grieving the death of her father, avoiding her loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.
Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighbourhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickle-covered pizzas for her son’s happiness.
As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.
Bold, tender, and unexpected, Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.
‘A fine debut’ Independent
‘Utterly moving’ Stylist
‘A thought provoking debut … I loved it’ Daily Mail
Readers are LOVING Pizza Girl
‘I just devoured it’
‘Superb writing’
‘Easily a cult classic’
‘I read this book in one sitting’
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Additional information
| Publisher | HQ (24 Jun. 2021) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 208 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0008356440 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0008356446 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 1.6 x 19.8 cm |
by Jess S
“I realized how avoidance was the most attention you could give something.”
Our narrator, the titular Pizza Girl, is a confused, pregnant 18 year old. She spends her days driving through LA dropping off pizzas and trying not to think too much… Not about her dead alcoholic father, her supportive (coddling) mother, and her overly attentive (bordering on smothering) boyfriend.
Her secret late night excursions to her dad’s shed where she drinks beer and watches infomercials are her only escape until a customer calls in with desperation in her voice requesting a pepperoni pizza with pickles.
In this way Pizza Girl meets Jenny, a 30-something stay at home mom unlike anyone Pizza Girl has met before. Behind the front door on her large house with the neat lawn in her upscale neighbourhood, Jenny is a mess… But she’s an ???????????????????????? mess. Suddenly Pizza Girl is infatuated and has a focus which has been sorely lacking in her life.
Pizza Girl is struggling with a lot of serious issues and getting out of her head is her coping mechanism. Through her job she glimpses just the surface of so many lives and compares her insides to their outsides until, with Jenny, she has a glimpse behind the curtain and feels she’s found a kindred soul.
Pizza Girl, the novel, feels breezy on its surface but there’s a deeper undercurrent of trauma running throughout it. Frazier manages to marry the two without becoming entrenched in the darkness. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and did so in one sitting. It moves along at a pace and the peaks and valleys were quite the ride.
I rooted heavily for Pizza Girl not in spite of her often ungrateful attitude and her increasingly poor choices, but ???????????????????????????? of them. She’s a somewhat lost, well-loved but lonely, fearful teen who’s going to have to somehow be a grown-up soon; she’s recognisable. That this is Frazier’s debut novel is incredible. I’d happily read anything else that she puts on paper and I’m hopeful that there will be plenty as I’m pretty sure she’s only in her early twenties.
by Minaal.Reads
Jean Kyoung Frazier’s debut novel portrays the messy, intense world of eighteen and pregnant, Pizza Girl. She’s trying to figure out her place in the world while living a life she doesn’t want. Her loving mother and doting boyfriend just want to make her life easier but under the circumstances, our main girl feels nothing but suffocated by both. So when she delivers pizza to Jenny one day, she welcomes the bizarre dependence that develops between the two of them as well as the unhealthy obsession that starts to grow in her mind.
✨ℝ????????????????????✨
Frazier has created a character who is incredibly flawed and incredibly human. She’s frustrating, selfish and she feels very misunderstood. But which teenager doesn’t? I felt sorry for her because she is so lost. The emotional weight and trauma that she’s carrying needs to be addressed but it’s not. It’s buried under all of the carpet which is probably why she is the way she is.
The negative reviews for this book on GR discuss the fact that there is no plot and that Pizza Girl is unlikeable. Yes. She’s definitely unlikeable but I’m ok with not liking my main characters – as long as they’re written well.
In regards to there being no plot, I would say that this is probably a) because it’s pretty short and b) a reflection of how mundane her life is and how stuck she feels. She’s 18, pregnant and doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. Some of us may be able to relate to all or some of that, but to those who can’t, take it back to the age of 18 and try to remember what it was like. Now add being pregnant and confused about what you want to do with your life to that mix. Not fun.
There are a few emotional flashbacks and heartfelt conversations between the characters which really lent themselves to the self-destructive behaviour that Pizza Girl shows and my only wish is that the book was fleshed out with more of these so that I could get a deeper look into the dynamics between the characters as well as a ‘timeline’ (not the right word but go with it) to understand how and what has led Pizza Girl to get to the point she’s at when we meet her. At just over 200 pages, this is a pretty quick coming-of-age novel so if you’re looking for something short, quirky and are open to unlikeable characters, give it a try.
Instagram: @minaal.reads
by Sandra Walsh
I can really see who Jane is and what she is like to be around, saying little and giving even less away.
Great read, although I wish it was longer, I want to know what happened next, especially how life turned out for Billy he seemed so sweet and earnest.