This Book Delivers Humor, Humanity and Hubris - The New York Times

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Welcome to Group Text, a monthly column for readers and book clubs about the novels, memoirs and short-story collections that make you want to talk, ask questions, and dwell in another world for a little bit longer.

A pregnant young woman working at a Los Angeles pizza joint takes a call from a customer requesting an unusual topping: pickles. Her life splits into a before and an after, with miraculous and disastrous consequences.

Frazier’s debut has the quirky, cool sweetness I loved in “Ladybird.” (You’ll laugh around the lump in your throat.) The writing feels fresh and uninhibited and the message — that a chance encounter can change your life — leaves you with a sense that anything is possible, even now.

When I was a teenager, I was the busiest babysitter on my block. The kids weren’t the main draw; their parents were. I was a nosy detective in “Dirty Dancing” cutoffs — peering around vertical blinds, snooping through wedding albums and junk drawers, blazing a trail to my future with bread crumbs dropped by strangers on their way to the bowling alley.

In Jean Kyoung Frazier’s fresh, funny, bittersweet PIZZA GIRL (Doubleday, 208 pp., $24.95), our narrator is a kindred forensic investigator. She has no idea what she wants from life — from relationships or her job — but she knows that whatever she wants is out there. She keeps her eyes peeled.

Jane is 18, newly pregnant, working at a pizza joint with a B rating for cleanliness and a bevy of downtrodden employees. She lives with her mother, a cashier at Kmart, and her boyfriend, Billy, a soccer phenom turned landscaper. These two are eager to welcome a baby; Jane is not. With every delivery run, Jane hands over warm boxes of pizza and grabs quick slices of life through customers’ half-open doors. Each transaction helps her sort out what she expects for herself. Some people are creepy, like the crematory worker who tells her, “I like to get high and burn bodies”; others seem inspiring, like Rita and Louie, regulars who give her hope that it’s “still possible to make it into your 30s with the same person and still be in love.” Jane absorbs it all like a sponge.

One afternoon, she answers a call from Jenny Hauser, a frustrated mother who has just relocated to Los Angeles from North Dakota. Her 7-year-old son is miserable, refusing to eat until his parents agree to take him back to Bismarck. The only thing that might snap him out of it, Jenny tells Jane, is pizza with pepperoni and pickles. Something in her voice — desperation, maybe optimism — inspires Jane to run out and buy a jar of pickles. When the pie is ready, she gets in her battered Ford Festiva and heads to Jenny’s.

Their first in-person interaction is brief but important. Jane notices Jenny’s long hair (a departure from the boring bobs worn by the mothers in her neighborhood) and the chaotic state of her home (Hot Cheetos and a tub of cream cheese on the couch, oh my). Jenny notices that Jane is pregnant and becomes the first to make the observation everyone else has avoided: “You’re not excited.”

“No,” Jane says, “I’m not excited.” (And then, “I regretted saying anything, regretted that I spoke the truth and it revealed my ugliness, let it breathe and writhe in the daylight.”)

Jenny’s response: “It’s good you’re not excited. Or it’s good you know you’re not excited.”

Slowly, carefully, with the wisdom and confidence of a more experienced novelist, Frazier walks us through the factors that led Jane to this moment: the death of her alcoholic father; her Korean mother’s relief that her daughter will have “an American husband and a true American baby”; Billy’s refusal to admit what he’s sacrificed to be with her; and — this is the hardest to swallow — Jane’s middle-of-the-night habit of chugging multiple beers in a backyard shed. Yes, while she is pregnant.

Here’s the thing about Frazier: She doesn’t seem to care whether you like her characters or agree with their decisions. Feel free to judge Jane (it’s hard not to) but be prepared to root for her as she grabs life by its too-hot crust and figures out how to get out of the pickle she’s in.

Fermentation is a theme. Jane is stewing in her own juices and then she evolves; Jenny helps. The change happens at warp speed, as when clouds speed across the sky in “The Bachelor” and you’re simultaneously moved by their beauty and relieved not to have to witness every second of the time lapse. Some of the clouds are dark, but that’s life.

At one point, Jenny and Jane are at a diner, and Jenny advises Jane not to bother with the voluminous menu: “Whatever you want, it’s probably on the menu. … Just conjure an image of your deepest desire and ask for it.” Jane navigates out of the quagmire of her own circumstances by the light of this advice. She takes a roundabout route with lots of turns and a few dead ends — but don’t let her out of your sight. The destination is worth the dizziness.

Discussion Questions

What do you make of the Korean concept of han, or “an acceptance of having a life … filled with sorrow and resentment”? How does Jane buy into this idea, if at all?
Even if you aren’t someone who reads the acknowledgments, please take a moment to read Jean Kyoung Frazier’s note to her mother. To what extent is this a story about mothers and daughters as much as it is about friendship?
How did your view of Jenny’s family change from the beginning of the book to the end?