Misery Business With Pickles On Top

How committed this slim book is to rolling in the muck of listless, lethargic apathy whilst coming of age in the 21st Century. Commits to its protagonist without potential. A protagonist that is an alcoholic pregnant pizza delivery girl (yup, you read that right), who descends into her own mental wasteland after she becomes attached to a customer that reaches out to her with an odd request for pizza toppings. Pizza Girl just commits, takes risks, and delivers (groan) a slice (groan) of unlikable characterization that can be of an acquired taste this side of pickles on pizza. 

With the hazy hustle of Los Angeles as the backdrop, our Pizza Girl is trudging through the mire of her existence. Fresh out of high school, she lives with her Korean immigrant mother who idolizes any and everything American (subtly coded as American = "Whiteness") and high school beau/baby daddy Billy who dropped his college plans and sports dreams to become a proper, supportive father. Both are well-meaning, but dote on her to an almost infantile, suppressive degree. She also hasn't reconciled over the lost of her alcoholic father, as his chaotic presence lingers in the car she makes deliveries in and the backyard shed where our Pizza Girl retreats for early morning booze binges. Her deliveries have her in contact with a collage of offbeat characters, but they don't stand out as much as Jenny, and her curiosity over the frazzled stay-at-home mom who out of the mundane blue requests pickles on her pizza for her finnicky son, functions as a distraction from her daily despondency. Jenny curiously connects with our Pizza Girl, but soon an awkward one-sided infatuation grows, unfurling into something a bit more convoluted, insidious even. 

Fast-paced and readable, this has a dark, sarcastic humor mixed in with millennial malaise that at times had me laugh out loud or wince --- depending on mood --- as Jean Kyoung Frazier is spot-on about how transient, tense, and truly ridiculous, your emerging twenties are. There is also a familiar set-up here, as it is this zany tightrope walk between the adolescent acerbity of Juno, despondent minimum wage of pending mamahood of Waitress, and the dire delusions of Taxi Driver. It comes across redundant, but Frazier's prose allows her tale to wobble and walk well into being a wholly original and engaging world which I appreciated.

What I didn't appreciate?: Making a character do 180 serial killer shit as some dark comedic "character development". 

Yeah...big nope.

Spoilers abound...

Stalking individuals, breaking and entering homes in the middle of the night, pointing guns at people, salivating over pumping lead in someone, this all to justify your deluded fantasies...? Bad. Drinking in excess all while pregnant? Disturbing. Horrible. (Um, alcohol fetal syndrome? Death?) Nothing about this screamed "loveable screw-up" and at least Travis Bickle had a somewhat societal cause for his body count. Pizza Girl drops hints at her burgeoning bisexuality, but her exploring her sexuality shouldn't be mistaken for the outright personality disorder and bloodlust she possesses. Her actions towards Jenny, Billy, her mother, her co-worker, her unborn child... I just couldn't overlook at the end. It just didn't endear or make me feel of an open mind about shitheel characters, never mind how much I do think there is a place for them in fiction. 

I get having difficulties making connections with those around you. I get wrestling on the floor with your own shame. I get kicking and screaming into adulthood. I've been there (still kinda there...) and it's a debilitating, disgusting void to be in for years, even a decade at a time living within your own doubts, fears, and insecurities. Doubly worse when you're dealing with the loss of a loved one, whether you loved them or not. How you don't know if you should feel frustration, relief, sadness or guilt or a combination of all three after seeing them suffer, this as you stand helplessly by and wonder all the whys and hows. I understand how much of a mental backslide you can find yourself in when caught up in such a taxing swirl. 

As brave as this book is to confront how grief and depression can erode our functioning sense of self, it still cowards in wanting to make the breakdown into a charred comedy of errors, where the awkward laughter and an The Office-styled camera swing should be inserted whenever Pizza Girl (who is *surprise* named after the author...) does something quite heinous. Add in how she sabotages every relationship, friendship that is extended her way, with everyone being as patient and kind as can be as they struggle with their own depressions and identity crises, the book just devolves into Pizza Girl: Portrait of a Future Serial Killer. 

It's this tonal weirdness and limp attempt at spontaneous existentialism was difficult to overlook,  considering Frazier didn't have to go that route, instead embellish what she laid before us. She does an excellent job navigating Pizza Girl's complicated relationship with her father, how she's torn between resentment and love, feeling he failed her and her mother, but also feeling as if it was somewhat their fault. The dynamics of that are compelling, highlighted more so on how she's attempting to configure that by (unwisely) emulating his downfall by picking up a bottle herself and projecting Jenny's absentee husband in her father's image. 

Her attachment to Jenny is less clear...though I sense that Pizza Girl utilized Jenny as an imaginative escape hatch from her own harsh realties. The fantasy was shattered and disillusion set in after she discovers that Jenny's family is anything but a functional "All-American (white) Family", this contrasting with her mother's obsession achieving the default white "Americaness" that seemed to be an unspoken string of inferiority between an Asian immigrant mother and her bi-racial/half-white daughter. Her relationship with Billy also gets shuffled to the backdrop, this when layers of their shared dissatisfaction and fright of being naïve, young parents interestingly come to the surface. These were things that I felt weren't given enough text time or unpacking. Things that could've been further explored, and make more of an explosive impact than trying to make our pizza slinging protagonist into some warped wannabe murderer. It felt as if Frazier was unsure how to end it all and just threw extra spice into the pot, when the flavor was just fine and needed more time to simmer, evolve.

For the frustrating ending that was provided, I found myself rooting for Billy to move out of that house, file for complete child custody, and get the hell away from an extremely disturbed, self-absorbed, and confused young woman.

[Oh, but a glitter shower for the rad book cover and for saying Tim Duncan is a bad ass motherfucker in print cause he was/is and isn't said enough #GoSpursGo].