Pizza girl : a novel /

The title character and narrator of Frazier's quirky and emotionally resonant L.A.-set debut doesn't love her pizza-delivery job, but, 18 and pregnant, she doesn't see a ton of other options. She's not thrilled about the baby either, but her boyfriend, Billy, and her mom make up for the excitement she lacks. From the moment she fields an order from Jenny, a woman desperate to please her young son with a pepperoni-and-pickle pizza, she finds an object for her devotion. Soon, Jenny convinces her to attend a moms' group, held in the same church where she and Billy first connected in grief counseling. With the loving, fully dimensional characters Frazier props up around her, Pizza Girl is bottled up and confused, her erratic behavior becoming cruel and worse. With readers, though, she's her full-hearted, idiosyncratic self. She fears she's too much like her late, alcoholic dad and wonders if her mom felt a similar ambivalence surrounding her own birth. Fans of Miranda July, Patty Yumi Cottrell, and Jen Beagin will find a kindred heroine in Frazier's Pizza Girl.

In Frazier's playful and unflinching debut, a pregnant 18-year-old pizza delivery driver dreams of a new life. The unnamed narrator, overwhelmed by anxiety about her pregnancy and her family, wants out of the house she grew up in, where she lives with her mother and her boyfriend, Billy, in suburban L.A. Enter Jenny Hauser, a 39-year-old stay-at-home mother who orders a large with pepperoni and pickles for her fussy son. From the moment Jenny opens her door, the narrator nurses a dream of escaping with her ("I wanted to take her hand and invite her to come with me whenever I ran away"). The narrator comes to befriend Jenny and learns she is unhappy in her marriage; thinking of how her dead father abused her mother, she assumes Jenny is abused as well. At home, the narrator turns cold toward Billy and her mother, and embraces her isolation the way her deceased abusive father once did, by turning to alcohol. Her frequent intoxication colors her view of her relationship with Jenny, whom she manages to kiss once and makes a valiant but dangerous and unnecessary effort to rescue. Frazier's characters are raw and her dialogue startlingly observant ("The environment can suck a dick--I'm driving my F-150 to work again," one regular tells her). This infectious evocation of a young woman's slackerdom will appeal to fans of Halle Butler and Ottessa Moshfegh, and will make it difficult not to root for the troubled and spirited pizza girl. (Jun.)

Gr 9 Up--Eighteen and pregnant, Jane struggles under the realizations that she's too much like her recently deceased alcoholic father, her former classmates refuse to recognize her, her boyfriend has thrown away his future for the sake of the baby, and she is largely ambivalent about the upcoming child. She looks at the lives of the customers she delivers pizza to, imaging what the rest of their days are like. She thinks she finds a kindred spirit in frazzled mother Jenny, who quickly realizes Jane is not excited about the baby. Finally seen, Jane becomes obsessed with Jenny and projects too much of herself onto her, leading to a series of very bad decisions. Jane's first-person narration immediately draws readers in, connecting with her disconnectedness, even as they wish she would pull herself together. Her lack of preciousness and wry sense of humor keep Jane's loneliness and resulting actions from veering into maudlin tragedy. Instead, the end reveals that people's lives are rarely as Jane imagines, whether they be one of her favorite pizza customers or her Korean immigrant mother. VERDICT Jane's strong voice and lack of post--high school direction will resonate with teens. A strong choice for browsing collections.--Jennifer Rothschild, Arlington County Public Libraries, VA

A pregnant pizza delivery girl receives a late-night call from a woman desperate to find a pepperoni-and-pickle pizza, and they strike up an unlikely friendship that begins to border on obsession. In this mumblecore-esque novel, 18-year-old Jane spends her days delivering pizzas to a colorful LA clientele that includes Xbox-playing accountants, a crematorium worker, a man with six Chihuahuas, and a "grandma type" who tips her "a single dime." She's not wild about her job but grateful that it gets her out of the house, where she feels smothered by her mother's and boyfriend's affections. One night, Jane receives a frantic call from stay-at-home mom Jenny Hauser, whose son is upset about the family's move and is on a hunger strike until he gets a pepperoni-and-pickles pizza just like the one he used to get in Bismarck, North Dakota. The pizza isn't on the restaurant's menu, but "pickles were cheap," so Jane makes her own. This tense and tender novel follows Jane's increasingly frequent delivery of pizzas to, and her growing fascination with, Jenny in an effort to avoid thinking about her impending motherhood and her fraught relationship with her late father, whom she both resents and resembles. One night, when Jenny tells Jane that her husband got a new job so they have to move to Bakersfield, Jane's obsession kicks into high gear, leading her to drive to Jenny's new house in the middle of the night with a Coke can full of whiskey--and a gun in the passenger seat. A bittersweet bildungsroman about life's random turns and the struggle to survive in suburban LA. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.